Finance and Bookkeeping
QuickBooks Support for roofing contractors
How a file is built decides which questions it can answer years later. A file set up to produce a return is not thereby able to tell you what a job made.
What a working file looks like
A chart of accounts built backwards from the questions you actually ask, rather than forwards from a template. Fewer accounts than most files carry, with the distinctions that matter to a roofing company expressed where they can be grouped and filtered rather than buried in account names.
Lists that have been deduplicated once and are kept that way — customers, suppliers, items — so a relationship has one history rather than four partial ones.
And a close routine written down: the same steps, in the same order, every period. That last item is what keeps the first two true, because a structure nobody maintains reverts within a season.
A file can only answer what it was shaped to answer
Most roofing companies have an accounting file that works. Invoices go out, bills go in, the year end gets done. The trouble appears at the first question that was not anticipated when the file was built — and by then the answer requires re-coding history rather than running a report.
The reason is that a file is not a neutral container. Every structural decision made at setup is a decision about what will be visible later. Whether jobs are tracked as a dimension or only as text in a memo field. Whether material and labour are separable. Whether a supplier is one entity or several. None of those feel consequential when the file is new, and all of them determine which questions are answerable in the third year.
Roofing adds a specific pressure here. The unit that matters to an owner is the job, and jobs are not what a general-purpose accounting file is naturally organised around. A file that cannot group by job can still produce perfectly correct annual figures while being unable to tell you which of two crew configurations is more profitable — which is, for most owners, the only question they genuinely wanted the software for.
So this desk treats configuration as foresight rather than as setup. The list of questions comes first, in writing, and the structure follows from it. Restructuring an existing file is more work than building one correctly, which is an argument for doing it deliberately rather than an argument for leaving it.
The file implements a method
There is a reason a chart of accounts is not simply a matter of taste. A set of books implements an accounting method, and methods are held to a standard. 26 CFR 1.446-1 — General rule for methods of accounting states it directly: “no method of accounting is acceptable unless, in the opinion of the Commissioner, it clearly reflects income.”
Clearly reflects is a demanding phrase for something so short. It means the structure is answerable to whether the picture it produces is a true one — not merely internally consistent, and not merely conventional. A file whose shape obscures where income and cost actually arose is doing something more than being inconvenient.
Which is also why the choice of method itself is not a decision this desk makes. Selecting a method is a professional judgement with consequences, and it belongs with your licensed adviser. What we do is implement the method they have chosen faithfully in the file, and keep the structure capable of showing what it is supposed to show.
This describes an accounting standard in general terms. It is not legal, tax or accounting advice, it makes no determination about your method or your circumstances, and requirements differ. Those questions belong with your own licensed adviser; the department page below sets out where this work stops.
Roofing Back Office is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified by any software vendor named on this site. All product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Related desks in this department
File support sits inside Finance and Bookkeeping, which carries the boundary for the department as a whole.
Questions about the accounting file
Our file was set up by our accountant. Is something wrong with it?
Almost certainly not — it is probably set up correctly for the purpose it was built for, which was producing a return. That purpose needs far less structure than running a roofing company does, so a file can be entirely fit for filing and unable to tell you what a job made. Neither party did anything wrong; the file was simply never asked the second question.
What does a badly structured file actually cost?
Answers, and always later than you would like. The symptom is a question that should take a minute taking an afternoon of exporting and sorting — which crew type is costing most, whether a supplier price rise has landed, what the last ten jobs of one kind actually returned. The data is usually there. It is in a shape that does not group.
Will you restructure our chart of accounts?
Only against a written list of the questions you want answerable, and only with your accountant sighted on it — a chart is a shared instrument and changing it unilaterally makes their engagement harder, not easier. Most files need fewer accounts and better use of the other dimensions, not more accounts.
Our customer and vendor lists are a mess. Does that matter?
More than the chart, usually. Duplicate entries split a history in two, so the customer you have worked for four times shows as four relationships and none of them looks worth much. Deduplication is unglamorous and it is often the single change that makes reporting usable, because grouping only works when the things being grouped are recognised as the same thing.
Do you need admin access to our file?
A named user issued by you, at the permission level the work requires, which you can revoke without asking us. Nothing is maintained in a copy we hold and there is no export step to get anything back. If your accountant prefers a particular access arrangement we work inside it rather than around it.
We are thinking about switching software. Should we wait?
Clean first, then decide. Carrying duplicate lists and an unusable chart into new software reproduces the same problems in a nicer interface, and the migration will be blamed for them. The cleanup has value whether or not you move, which makes it the safe thing to do first in either scenario.
The standard quoted here
- 26 CFR 1.446-1 — General rule for methods of accounting — U.S. Office of the Federal Register (eCFR)
Write down the questions first
Three things you wish the software could tell you is enough to establish whether the file can be made to answer them.