Roofing Back Office

Finance and Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping for roofing contractors

Accurate books that arrive too late are a history assignment. The useful question is not whether the ledger is right — it is how far behind it is allowed to get.

Nate Jones · Founder, Roofing Back Office

Nate Jones is the founder of Roofing Back Office. On this desk he works with owners whose books are correct and eleven weeks old.

Last updated · Reviewed by Nate Jones

The monthly artifacts

A ledger where the period is genuinely closed rather than mostly entered. Bank and card positions reconciled against the statements themselves, not against what the feed suggested. And a short written note of anything that could not be resolved from the record, with the specific question attached, so the open items are a list rather than a feeling.

The note matters more than owners expect. Every set of books carries a few items that genuinely need somebody who was there, and the difference between a company whose books are current and one whose books are stuck is almost never volume. It is whether those items get asked about in the week they arise or accumulate silently until somebody attempts a reconstruction in March.

Lag is the number that matters

Bookkeeping has an unusual failure mode among the functions here: it does not break, it drifts. Nobody rings to complain that the categorisation is six weeks old. Production continues, jobs get built and invoiced, and the ledger recedes gently into a state where it describes a company that existed last quarter.

The cost surfaces as decisions made on instinct that could have been made on evidence. Whether this month is genuinely better than the one before. Whether the supplier price rise has actually landed. Whether the company can carry another crew through a slow stretch. All of those are answerable from a current ledger and unanswerable from an accurate one that stops in the spring.

Which reframes what the desk is for. The point is not producing correct figures — a good accountant will produce correct figures eventually from almost any pile. The point is producing them while they can still change something, and that is a question about cadence and about how quickly an unresolved item gets a question attached to it.

What bookkeeping produces, and what holds each piece up A horizontal spine carries three labelled artifacts produced by bookkeeping: a current ledger, a reconciled bank position, and a month that is closed. Beneath each artifact a vertical line drops to a second tier naming what holds it up — respectively entries posted while the detail is still known, matched against the statement, not against memory, and nothing left in suspense to be worked out later. Across the foot of the diagram a separate band states the judgement this function does not make, which is any opinion on whether the statements are fairly presented. The diagram shows structure only and contains no figures. What this desk produces A current ledger A reconciled bankposition A month that is closed entries posted while thedetail is still known matched against thestatement, not againstmemory nothing left in suspenseto be worked out later Every item above sits on the one below it. Outside this desk Any opinion on whether the statements are fairlypresented
Each artifact on the spine has something underneath holding it up. That is the whole design: bookkeeping is not an argument, it is a set of items that can each be traced to how they were arrived at, so that a number can still change a decision when it arrives. The band across the bottom is the part that stays outside the work.

Sufficient is the standard, not tidy

There is less prescription about the form of a set of books than most owners assume. The IRS publication on Publication 583, Starting a Business and Keeping Records states plainly that “Except in a few cases, the law does not require any specific kind of records,” while also noting that “You must keep your business records available at all times for inspection by the IRS.” The form is largely yours; the availability is not.

What replaces prescription is a sufficiency test. Under 26 CFR 1.6001-1 — Records, a person must “keep such permanent books of account or records, including inventories, as are sufficient to establish the amount of gross income, deductions, credits, or other matters required to be shown.” Sufficient to establish — not sufficient to suggest, and not merely present.

That standard is a practical instruction rather than an abstraction. It is the reason a categorised transaction with no document behind it is weaker than it looks, and the reason an item parked in suspense is a liability rather than a placeholder. A ledger meeting it is one where any figure can be walked back to something that establishes it, which happens to be the same property that makes the ledger worth reading in-year.

This describes recordkeeping standards in general terms. It is not legal, tax or accounting advice, it makes no determination about your arrangements, and requirements differ by circumstance. Questions about your own position belong with your licensed adviser — and the department page below sets out where this work stops.

Inside the finance desk

Bookkeeping is the base the rest of Finance and Bookkeeping sits on, and the department page sets out the boundary that governs all of it rather than repeating it here.

What owners ask about the books

How far behind are most roofing companies?

Further than they think, and almost always in a particular pattern: the bank feed is current, the categorisation is a month or two behind, and the reconciliation has not been finished since a quarter that felt quiet. The company is not disorganised. It has simply been running production, and bookkeeping is the one function where nothing visibly breaks while it slips.

What does current actually mean here?

Current enough that a number could change a decision you are about to make. That is a moving standard rather than a fixed one — a company deciding whether to take another crew on needs different currency from one deciding whether to buy a truck. The practical version most owners settle on is that last month closes early enough in this month to still be worth looking at.

We are a long way behind. Where does that start?

With the oldest open period, working forward, because periods depend on each other and cleaning the recent months first produces figures that move again the moment the earlier ones are touched. Catch-up work is quoted separately from ongoing work for exactly that reason: it has a definite end, and pretending otherwise buries it inside a monthly figure where nobody can see the progress.

Do you work in our file or move us somewhere?

In yours. The books stay where your accountant already looks and where your history already lives, and nothing is maintained in a copy we hold. If the file has structural problems we will describe them and what fixing them would involve, but a migration is a decision with a cost and it is yours to make.

What do you need from us each month?

Less than a company expects once the routine settles: access, the statements that do not arrive electronically, and answers on the handful of items that genuinely cannot be resolved from the record. The first month or two carry more questions than the ones after, because most of what looks like a question is really a pattern that has not been established yet.

Will our accountant be happy with this?

That is the standard we work to, and it is a useful one because it is external. Accountants want the same things in every engagement — reconciled balances, a trail behind each figure, and no unexplained items parked in suspense. Work that meets that bar makes their engagement cheaper, and they will usually tell you within one cycle whether it does.

Recordkeeping references

Find out how far back the ledger goes

The answer is usually available in a few minutes from the file itself, and it is the number that decides what the first month of work is.

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