Choosing between the percentage of completion and completed contract methods significantly affects a construction company’s financial reporting and cash flow management. The percentage of completion method offers ongoing insight into project performance and stability, while the completed contract method provides simplicity and potential tax benefits. Understanding these methods is essential for effective financial planning and operational success in the construction industry. Construction accounting can be a complex and challenging task for independent contractors and construction businesses of all sizes. With unique project-based structures, long-term contracts, and fluctuating costs, the financial management of construction projects requires specialized knowledge and practices.

You’ll pay a set subscription fee per month, with add-on fees per user for some platforms, for your accounting software.
The platform also generates customizable, user-defined reports for monthly, quarterly, annual, or any fiscal period.
Trimble Viewpoint delivers integrated construction accounting and management software designed to improve collaboration, transparency, and efficiency across the construction lifecycle.
If a project is not performing up to standards, you can find out in real time before it affects profits or incurs a loss.
Acumatica Construction Edition is a scalable option for both small contractors and larger construction companies.
Many construction companies use the percentage-of-completion method for long-term projects, as it provides a more accurate picture of financial performance over time.

Best Construction Accounting Software for 2025

It essentially ensures that your service price covers How to Use Construction Bookkeeping Practices to Achieve Business Growth all overhead expenses and helps ensure you make a profit on all of your construction projects. In this guide, we address some of those challenges and cover the basics of construction accounting. Follow this resource step-by-step to establish an effective accounting process, avoid costly mistakes, and make more money. Maintain accurate records of all financial transactions, including receipts, invoices, and bank statements.

In many cases, you need to have your financial records for at least three to seven years (varying by state and type of record) so losing them would cause a lot of problems.
Contractors should separate business and personal finances, ensure proper job costing and record all day-to-day cash inflows and outflows.
Vista makes tracking expenses, profitability, and other metrics at the company, department, and work order levels easy.
Buildertrend isn’t a complete bookkeeping system per se, but it integrates with QuickBooks Online and Xero to enable accounting features, like invoicing and income and expense tracking.

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Both of these approaches work, but they’re a finish hammer when you need a nail gun. For the construction industry, though, there are far too many quirks and details that most of the off-the-shelf tools can’t accommodate. We looked at third-party ratings and reviews to see how actual users felt about the software. The average threshold rating needed to be 3.5 stars or better to get https://www.merchantcircle.com/blogs/raheemhanan-deltona-fl/2024/12/How-Construction-Bookkeeping-Services-Can-Streamline-Your-Projects/2874359 the highest rating in our research. We turned to popular sites, including Trustpilot, G2 and Capterra, for these customer responses. We also weighted the number of responses, giving higher scores to providers that had at least 300 positive reviews to help reduce bias.

Best Software for Construction Bookkeeping

If simple client collaboration is one of your top priorities, consider making Buildertrend your top pick.
You can import progress photos or document issues, access files from the mobile app, and share documents with clients and team members.
Users particularly like the customization of reports and how robust the GL is, offering details on every aspect of a transaction.
You may not be able to automate all of your bookkeeping, but there are parts of it that will make it much easier to do.
Buildertrend offers unlimited document, photo, and video storage in all plans.
Unfortunately, lots of construction-specific accounting products are quote-based.
That means you should plan time, if possible, to chat with multiple companies to receive and compare quotes.

The construction industry is highly susceptible to political and economic fluctuations that disrupt the supply chain. Things can happen beyond your control to destabilize your cash flow, such as bad weather conditions or a piece of equipment breaking down. If you don’t have a highly accurate and efficient construction bookkeeping system, the rest of your business will suffer.

Customer Reviews and Testimonials

In other words, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise’s contractor-specific plan will work for solopreneurs. But once your construction company starts to grow, you’ll definitely want to upgrade to a thorough ERP solution. While COINS clearly has a lot going for it, it’s not as user-friendly as some other software options (most notably Jonas Premier). While customers like its clear dashboard and straightforward financial statements, COINS struggled to get users up to speed during its last update. For six weeks, you’ll get thorough one-on-one software instruction, which continues with unlimited customer support and group training. Few software companies offer that level of product training or customer care.