Commercial Contractors
Bonding capacity decides what you can bid. Retainage decides whether you can carry it. We run the work-in-progress schedule, the cash forecast, and the tax position that sit behind both, so the constraint on your next job is your capability rather than your paperwork.
Where commercial work is different
A contractor carrying retainage, progress billing, and a surety relationship is not running a bigger service business. The constraints are different, and so is the reporting that keeps them visible.
You found work worth having, asked for a single-job limit to bid it, and the answer came back short. Or the aggregate did not move at renewal despite a good year. A surety decides both by reading your work-in-progress schedule, your working capital and your equity, and when that picture is a year old the ceiling arrives earlier than your business earned.
Underbillings are work performed and not invoiced. Overbillings are cash held against work still to do. Read the wrong way, a profitable month looks like a crisis, or a loss stays invisible until closeout.
Five or ten percent of every contract sits with someone else until the job closes, sometimes long after. It is your profit, and it is not in your account, which is how a busy year and a cash squeeze happen at once.
Percentage-of-completion, completed-contract, and the exceptions between them change when you pay tax on a long job. A method chosen years ago at a different size can accelerate tax or bring look-back interest later.
Certified payroll, prevailing wage, and subcontractor classification are not bookkeeping details on public work. Getting them wrong brings back-pay liability and can put your eligibility for the next contract at risk.
Core runs underneath every engagement: the books, AP, AR, job costing, and one report a month that says where you actually stand. The three levels above it are not sizes. Each is attached to something you cannot afford to lose, a scheduled audit, the capacity to bid, or the decisions that change the business, and each points at the modules that move it.
Books, AP, AR, job costing. Always on, at every level.
Accounts receivable is optional. Plenty of contractors invoice themselves and would rather keep it that way, so we scope it in or out rather than assuming.
One page, every month, and the same four questions answered every time. It is the difference between books that record what happened and a report you can run the business from.
Delivered by the eighth business day, walked on a quarterly call.
Most contractors recognise themselves in one of these immediately. You are not picking a size, you are naming the constraint, and the modules follow from it.
The books tie to your contracts, and the sub file survives an audit.
Core, plus
Compliance
The schedule your surety reads, and margin you can still do something about.
Core, plus
GrowthProtection
Budget, forecast, and the big calls modeled before you commit to them.
Core, plus
GrowthProtection
The filings and documentation that decide an audit before it starts.
The forward view: what the job is doing while you can still change it.
What holds up when somebody else is reading your numbers.
Scroll sideways to compare
| Deliverable | Compliance | WIP & Bonding | CFO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contractor Position Page Core | Monthly | Monthly | Monthly |
| Books reconciled and closed Core | Monthly | Monthly | Monthly |
| Job cost coding Core | Ongoing | Ongoing | Ongoing |
| Review call Core | Quarterly | Quarterly | Quarterly |
| Subcontractor documentation review | Monthly | – | – |
| Audit package assembled | Before policy expiry | – | – |
| Work-in-progress schedule | – | Monthly | – |
| Contract margin against estimate | – | Monthly | – |
| Bonding capacity and position review | – | Quarterly | – |
| Cash forecast | – | – | Rolling, updated weekly |
| Budget against forecast | – | – | Monthly |
| Tax and scenario review | – | – | Quarterly |
Core rows run in every engagement. Below them, a blank means that deliverable is not in that door's set, not that you cannot have it. Modules attach to any engagement, which is the point of running it this way. What you actually need gets settled in the assessment rather than by picking a column.
By what the work actually takes, not by your revenue. Two contractors doing the same volume can need very different things, and we quote it after we have seen your books. There is no rate card, because there is no version of this work that is the same for two contractors.
Reviewed quarterly against a rolling six-month average, and it moves in both directions. If your volume falls, so does the fee.
Three steps, and the middle one is not optional. Nobody signs anything before both sides have seen the same picture.
Half an hour on what your contracts look like, what your surety or your lender is asking for, and what is actually constraining the business. No charge, and no obligation on either side.
We work through 120 checkpoints across tax, cash flow, and job margin, then show you what we found and what it is costing. It is how both of us decide: you see whether the work is worth what it costs, and we see whether we can actually move your position. You keep the findings and the plan whether or not you go further.
$497 One flat fee. Required before we take you on, and before you take us on.
What we need from you
You add us from your side, under Manage Users and Accountants. QuickBooks Online does not allow us to send the invitation, which is the step that most often stalls a start.
You have seen what we found and what it is costing before you have committed to anything ongoing. We have seen your books and know whether we can move your position. If we cannot, we say so at this step rather than three months in.
Some contractors are not carrying enough contract complexity for any of this to earn its keep. Bookkeeping on its own is the one engagement attached to nothing: the books still exist if you fire us, and plenty of firms will keep them. We will tell you that rather than sell you the smallest package.
The three above are each attached to something you cannot afford to lose: a scheduled audit, the capacity to bid, and the decisions that change the business. If none of those is live for you yet, come back when one is.
Six questions you can answer from memory, without opening your books. At the end you will know whether the thing constraining you is a surety or the general contractor above you, and which page to read next.
No email. Nothing collected. About a minute.
Start the six questionsThe work in detail
Over- and under-billing, the schedule your surety actually reads, and what moves your capacity before the next renewal.
Certified payroll, prevailing wage, lien waivers, insurance certificates, and the classification exposure that surfaces at audit.
Cash forecasting on draws and retainage, contract margin against estimate, and the decisions modeled before you commit.
Certificates tested against service dates, payroll class separation, overtime records, and the audit package built before the auditor asks.
Method election, look-back, equipment timing, entity structure, and multi-state exposure as the work crosses lines.
If you are not the contractor this page is for
This engagement is yours too. But if what brought you here was a sub whose paperwork keeps failing your prequal, there is a page about that written for you rather than for him.
What we do with that subcontractorIf you are not bonded yet, and what is costing you money is retainage, pay applications and change orders rather than a bid limit, then the constraint is the contractor above you, not a surety. Same discipline, aimed at that instead.
See the subcontractor engagementWhen a submission will not support the capacity a contractor is asking for, the schedule is usually the problem, not the business. There is a page written for you rather than for him.
What we do with that contractorQuestions
Your accountant reports what happened. The advisory layer is forward-looking: a work-in-progress schedule that shows over- and under-billing while a job can still be corrected, a cash forecast built on your actual draw and retainage schedule, and contract margin measured against the estimate rather than discovered at closeout. The compliance work still happens underneath, but it is the substrate rather than the product.
A surety reads your work-in-progress schedule, your working capital, and your equity to decide how much work you can carry. Underbillings look like money you have spent but not invoiced, and they weaken the picture. A clean, current WIP schedule presented the way an underwriter expects to read it is often the difference between the capacity you have and the capacity you need for the next bid.
It depends on contract length, your average contract size, and your revenue, and the thresholds move. Choosing wrong can accelerate tax on jobs you have not finished or leave you filing look-back interest later. It is worth deciding deliberately with your actual contract mix in front of you rather than inheriting whatever method was set up years ago.
Yes. Public and government-funded work carries certified payroll reporting and wage determinations that vary by trade and locality. Getting it wrong brings back-pay liability and can put future contract eligibility at risk, so it runs as part of the compliance substrate rather than as a service you have to remember to ask for.
The usual signals are a first bonded or bid project, retainage appearing on contracts, progress billing or AIA, prevailing wage work, a second entity, or a second payroll state. Any one of those changes what your books have to do. If you are seeing them for the first time, the honest answer may be that you are between stages, and we will tell you that rather than sell you the larger engagement.
Bring your current WIP schedule and your last two years of statements. We will tell you what a surety sees, what is holding your capacity down, and what the work to fix it looks like. If we are not the right fit, we will say that too.
Talk through your position
