Accounting and Tax Services for Drywall Contractors
A hectic month is a sign that the business is doing well. The calendar is jam-packed, the crew is booked out weeks in advance, and the phone is ringing off the hook with new estimates. Then, the bank account doesn't match the efforts. Drywall work is fast-paced: board is installed, mud is applied, the crew moves on to the next job, and often the finances don't keep up.
Many boards run over budget. A team of workers is forced to stay an extra day on a ceiling job that should have taken only half a day. A client pays 45 days after the invoice, well after payment of material and labour costs. It doesn't appear as just one wrong choice. It shows up quietly, job after job, until a busy season ends with far less profit than the workload suggested.
More jobs should mean more profit. Right? Not necessarily. This depends on whether or not you know the actual cost of each job to you.
Where the Margin Quietly Disappears
Each drywall company has its own areas of profit leakage. The cost of the materials fluctuates from one quote to another and from installation to installation. Labour is time-consuming on jobs that have low ceilings, short deadlines, or crews that are new to the site. A bad tape joint or soft spot in the mud erodes into a margin that was deemed to be satisfactory on the papers. Waiting on framers or painters pushes a schedule, and a delayed schedule pushes cash flow.
Where the Paperwork
Piles Up
Then there's the paperwork with late invoices, GST/HST, payroll source deductions, T4s for employees, and T5018 slips for subcontractors. Add materials paid for with a personal card as it was quicker, and at year-end it's difficult to distinguish between those that were profitable and those that were merely keeping the crew occupied.
Drywall Accounting Has Outgrown the Shoebox of Receipts
A truck business was once possible on a notebook and a folder of receipts combined with a bookkeeper, once a year. A growing drywall business can't. It takes more than a clean-up just before tax day to provide real financial visibility for multiple crews, active sites, progress billing schedules and subcontractors that need to be paid and reported correctly.
Accounting practices should not be limited to the month that the job is finished but should continue
until it is fully completed.
Most bookkeeping is recording events as they happen. When it comes to job costing, it's about tracking what's happening as it happens: the estimate, the order for materials, the hours worked by the labour, the installation, any rework, the progress billing, the receivable, and lastly the payment. It is obvious that, as opposed to taking a guess after the invoice has been paid, where a job's profit is made or lost is.
It doesn't matter if your books are managed in QuickBooks Online, Xero or Sage, or your jobs are being managed in Jobber, Buildertrend or another solution, the one thing that is the same is the need to connect what the job earned back to what it cost, crew-by-crew and site-by-site.
The Numbers Worth Watching
When labour hours continue to exceed estimates, and the job is still making money, it's almost never to do with sales. It's the price, the schedule, or your crew's productivity… and it is correctable once you can see it.
Who This Is For
Designed for owner-operated and incorporated drywall contractors that have surpassed the spreadsheet: businesses with multiple crews and projects, employees, subcontractors and real material and labour costs to deal with. It's for contractors who want to become familiar with their numbers enough to confidently quote the next job, not just contractors seeking someone to fill out a return once a year.
Accounting Support Built Around How Drywall Contractors Work
Bookkeeping: reconciled accounts, categorized expenses, accounts payable and receivable, and job-level cost tracking, which displays actual project profitability rather than one company-wide number.
Manages payroll, remittances and T4 preparation so that employees and CRA deadlines don't become a monthly scramble.
GST/HST tracking and filing make sure you remain ahead of the obligations that differ from province to province; otherwise, the filing deadline comes as a surprise.
Turn Your Books Into a Tax Strategy
Not Just Tax Filing
The best time to do tax planning is before, not after, the year ends. It involves buying the equipment when it's best for the business, setting up owner compensation, utilizing capital cost allowance properly and finding valid deductions during the year and not in March. That applies to incorporated contractors (T2 corporate returns) and owners (T1 personal returns and compensation planning to retain more of what the business generates).
Online Accountant is a Xero Gold Partner Champion and QuickBooks Online Elite Partner, which means they're working within your system instead of asking you to change your business operations to suit your Accountant.
Ready to Know Which Jobs Are Actually Making You Money?
When your crew is booked out, and you still don't know where all the profits have gone, you're likely not finding them in another busy season; it's simply in the numbers behind the numbers you've already worked. Discuss bookkeeping, job costing and tax planning based on the way a drywall business operates with Online Accountant.
Contact Online Accountant