The Problem
You've outgrown your startup bookkeeping arrangement.
It worked at $1M. Somewhere past that, it stopped. Now the reports show up three weeks late, the numbers change after you've already looked at them, and nobody can tell you which jobs, crews, or divisions actually make money.
Here's the part most owners get wrong: this is almost never a people problem. Your bookkeeper is working hard inside a system that was never designed, it just accumulated. Construction books are some of the most complicated books there are: job costing, direct labor, progress billing, retainage, multiple crews and locations. A system that "just grew" can't handle that. No hire fixes it either.
Before you pay a $75,000 controller to manage the mess, spend $10,000 making the mess not exist.
THE SYSTEM — RUN LIKE ONE OF YOUR JOBS
You'd never start a build without a walkthrough and a blueprint, or close one out without a final inspection. Neither do I.
The Walkthrough (Free)
A short call. I ask the questions that tell me how your accounting actually runs today, and whether we're a fit.
The Accounting Blueprint — $1,500
A 24-point inspection of your entire accounting operation: payroll, job costing, invoicing and collection, spend, reporting, close. You get a score out of 24, a punch list of everything that's broken or manual, and a phased plan to fix it. Even if you never hire me for the rebuild, you'll know exactly what to fix and in what order. Credited in full against the Full Gut if you move forward.
The Full Gut — from $10,000
The rebuild. We strip your accounting down to the studs and rebuild it right: do it once, do it right. Final price is set by your Blueprint score, so a 5-out-of-24 disaster isn't priced like a 19-out-of-24 tune-up.
The Final Inspection (included with the Full Gut)
Ninety days after the rebuild, I re-score all 24 points. You see the before and after in one number. Anything that slipped goes on the punch list, and the punch list gets worked until it's closed.
The Maintenance Plan — Priced Separately
Ongoing bookkeeping on the system we built, measured in minutes of review instead of hours of data entry. One rule: I don't do bookkeeping on systems I haven't rebuilt.
What the Full Gut Actually Includes
01
Clean Structure
A chart of accounts rebuilt around how you bid and run work: every revenue line paired with its costs, direct labor in job costs where it belongs, so gross margin by service line is real, not a guess.
02
Ease of Bookkeeping Flow
Payroll, payables, and invoicing automated: coding happens at the moment of spend, not at month-end, and cash arrives faster after setup than it did before. If it doesn't, the design isn't finished.
03
Clear, Actionable Metrics
KPIs with targets, not just dashboards. Gross margin by division, labor efficiency, backlog, cash runway: your numbers against agreed targets, visible whenever you want them.
04
Cash Planning
A rolling cash forecast connected to your actual books.
05
Documented Processes
A documented close and task system your bookkeeper runs without having to track anything down. The process survives turnover, because the system carries the knowledge, not the person.
The deliverables matter, but so does the flow. After the rebuild, the month itself runs differently: transactions arrive already coded, reconciliations take minutes instead of afternoons, errors surface the day they happen instead of three weeks later, and the close becomes a calm review instead of a scramble. Faster, more accurate, and easier on everyone who touches it.
Your bookkeeper keeps their job. They just finally get a system worthy of it.
PROOF
His overhead was never volatile. His bookkeeping was.
Before the rebuild, one contractor's reported overhead swung between $79,000 and $135,000 a month. Nobody could plan around that. After the rebuild we restated six months of books: his real overhead was steady the whole time, between $88,000 and $102,000. His overhead was never volatile. His bookkeeping was.
"This is staggering."
"Damn, that's slick."
"I've never had access to my own numbers like this."
Built for Contractors
Bad books are expensive every single month.
I work with general contractors and specialty trades: electrical, fire protection, concrete, hardscaping, and more. Construction books are harder than almost anyone else's, which is exactly why the generic bookkeeping playbook fails you and exactly why a real system pays for itself: when the books are this complicated, bad books are expensive every single month.
General Contractors
Electrical
Hardscaping
Concrete
Fire Protection
How I Think
Five principles, in order. When they conflict, the earlier one wins.
01
Elimination over automation.
Before asking how to automate a task, ask whether it needs to happen at all.
04
Insight over reporting.
If a report doesn't help you make a decision, it's just paperwork.
02
Automation over labor.
Every recurring manual task is a recurring failure point and a recurring cost.
05
The system carries the load.
Nothing important should live in one person's head. Your people run the system, and the system survives vacations, promotions, and turnover.
03
Simple is profitable.
The simpler the process, the more likely it gets done right every single time.
About Nate
Twenty years of turning financial chaos into clarity.
MSFA · CMA · CSCA
I've built and sold businesses of my own, so I build your accounting the way an owner actually uses it: to price work, pay people, and decide what's next.
Friendly. Intelligent. And just a little bit badass.
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Find out what your books would score.
Book the Walkthrough. It's free, it's short, and worst case you leave with a clearer picture of your own back office.