Frequently Asked Questions

Construction bookkeeping is built around jobs—not just categories. Contractors need systems that track labor, subs, materials, equipment, change orders, POs, progress billing, retainage, and WIP reporting. Unlike general bookkeeping firms, Salisbury Bookkeeping builds construction-grade workflows using job costing, percent-complete revenue, and real-time dashboards so you can see exactly where each project stands. This ensures accurate margins, stable cash flow, and better operations.

Job costing shows you exactly how much labor, materials, subcontractors, and overhead each job consumes. When job costing is wrong—or missing—you get “profit fade,” where a job that looks profitable ends up losing money. We fix this by setting up QBO Projects, standardized cost codes, field-based receipt capture, subcontractor tracking, and enforced coding rules. The result? You know your profit on every project, in real time, before it’s too late to fix it.

WIP (Work In Progress) reporting tracks percent complete, projected final costs, earned revenue, and over/under billing. Without WIP reporting, month-end financials hide the truth about a project’s performance. With WIP, you can see profit fade early, catch overruns, fix billing issues, and keep margins intact. Salisbury Bookkeeping delivers WIP dashboards that update automatically, giving you daily visibility—not monthly surprises.

We integrate with construction-first tools including QuickBooks Online, Knowify, Buildertrend, Jobber, ServiceTitan, CoConstruct, and field-based mobile apps for POs and receipt capture. We also build custom dashboards that pull job profitability, WIP metrics, AR/AP, and cash flow into one clean, real-time view. This creates a unified financial system that contractors can trust.

We don’t run payroll in-house—and that’s intentional. Construction payroll requires specialized systems that track prevailing wage, certified payroll, labor burden, multi-state compliance, job-level labor allocation, and union/prevailing wage variations. Rather than using generic tools, we partner with payroll providers who invest millions into doing payroll right—systems like ADP, Gusto, or QuickBooks Payroll Elite.

These platforms are built specifically to manage complex construction workflows including certified payroll reports, job-coded labor tracking, garnishments, deductions, workers comp audits, and state/federal compliance. They handle the processing, taxes, filings, and liabilities—so you never risk penalties or reporting errors.

Our role is the financial system behind payroll:

We ensure every hour is coded to the correct job or cost code

We map labor burden properly (taxes, insurance, overhead)

We sync payroll data into job costing

We reconcile payroll accounts weekly or monthly

We ensure your WIP, job costs, and cash forecasts are accurate

This gives you the best of both worlds:
industry-leading payroll systems + construction-specific bookkeeping and job costing.

With Salisbury Bookkeeping, payroll becomes accurate, consistent, and fully integrated into your job profitability and forecasting—not just a standalone service.

We don’t prepare or file taxes in-house — and that’s by design. Construction taxes involve complex rules around job costing, equipment depreciation, retainage, payroll burden, contractor deductions, and revenue recognition. Instead of trying to be “a jack of all trades,” we partner directly with licensed tax professionals whose entire business is staying up to date with federal, state, and industry-specific tax laws.

Our role is to build clean, accurate, construction-grade financials that make your CPA’s job easier and dramatically reduce your risk of errors, penalties, or missed deductions. When your books are clean, job-costed correctly, and supported with WIP reports and proper expense documentation, your tax professional can maximize your deductions and ensure full compliance.

What we do on the bookkeeping side:

Maintain clean, audit-ready books

Track job costing and labor accurately

Prepare all financial reports needed by your CPA

Ensure expenses are categorized correctly

Reconcile accounts monthly

Provide WIP, AR/AP, and project profitability data

Organize your books for tax planning and filings

What our tax partners handle:

Tax strategy

Tax planning

Annual filings

Depreciation schedules

Equipment and asset treatment

Business structure recommendations

Compliance with federal, state, and industry regulations

Together, this creates a checks-and-balances system:
You get a bookkeeping specialist who understands construction at a deep operational level plus a tax professional whose entire expertise is compliance and tax law. This approach gives you accurate books, maximized deductions, and much lower financial risk than relying on a single generalist firm.