Contractors & Home Services · South Florida

Every Job Quotes Profitable. The Year Somehow Isn't.

Bookkeeping, job costing, and fractional CFO work for contractors and home services businesses. This is the industry where we learned the trade: trucks, crews, deposits, draws, and the gap between what the estimate said and what the job cost.

Where Contractor Books Go Wrong

We have cleaned up these exact books for years. The failure points are almost always the same six.

NO JOB COSTING, NO IDEA WHICH JOBS WIN

Revenue is up, the year-end number is thin, and nobody can say which jobs made money. Without job-level costs, every estimate next year repeats this year's mistakes.

DEPOSITS SPENT BEFORE THE JOB STARTS

Customer deposits land in the same account as everything else and quietly fund payroll. By the time the job starts, its materials money is gone.

WIP NOBODY TRACKS

Half-done jobs hide profit swings. A month looks great because you billed ahead, then terrible because you did the work. The P&L whipsaws and tells you nothing.

BOOKS MONTHS BEHIND, LENDER ASKING NOW

The SBA lender or bonding agent wants current financials. QuickBooks has not been touched since spring. Every request becomes a fire drill.

SUBS AND CREW CLASSIFIED BY HABIT

1099 versus W-2 decided by what you have always done, not by the actual facts. It works until the audit or the comp claim.

PRICING ON GUT FEEL

Labor rates set years ago, overhead never allocated, change orders given away. Margin leaks at the estimate before the truck ever rolls.

This Is the Industry We Come From

No translation needed here. Construction and trades cleanup is the core of the last decade of our work: WIP schedules, job-cost rebuilds, retainage, draw schedules, deposit accounting, sub classification.

In the trade and repair shops we clean up, $40K to $80K routinely sits stranded in unbilled work and aged receivables that nobody is chasing. That is a practitioner observation, not a survey, and it is the first place we look.

The pattern is almost never effort. It is instrumentation. The crews work, the trucks roll, and the books cannot tell the owner which of it paid.

Fix the instruments first.

Services & Pricing

MONTHLY BOOKKEEPING (From $699/mo)

Clean monthly books with job costing built in, so the P&L matches the work and the estimates learn from the actuals.

  • Monthly close and bank reconciliation
  • Job-level cost tracking
  • Customer deposits handled as liabilities
  • P&L and balance sheet every month
  • Year-end package ready for your tax accountant

CONTROLLER / FRACTIONAL CFO (From $3,500/mo)

Controller-level review every month: WIP schedule, job margin analysis, cash forecast, lender and bonding support.

  • Monthly WIP schedule and job margin review
  • Cash flow forecasting around your job pipeline
  • SBA covenant and bonding-agent reporting
  • Labor rate and overhead allocation review
  • On call for pricing and hiring decisions

BOOKS CLEANUP (From $2,500)

Months behind or jumbled by a bookkeeper who never saw a job cost? We rebuild the file and hand back books your lender can read.

  • Historical cleanup and full reconciliation
  • Job-cost structure built into the chart of accounts
  • QuickBooks rebuild or reorganization
  • Fixed price quoted before we start

Answers We Already Wrote Down

Frequently asked questions

What trades and home services businesses do you work with?

HVAC, electrical, plumbing, roofing, pools, general contractors, and specialty trades, mostly founder-led companies in the $1M to $5M range in South Florida. If you run crews, carry deposits, and quote jobs, the mechanics are the same and so is the fix.

Do we have to replace our office manager or bookkeeper?

Usually not. If the day-to-day entry is solid, we sit above it as the controller layer: reviewing, reconciling, and telling you what the numbers mean each month. If the bookkeeping itself is the problem, we take it over and your office manager gets their week back.

Do you understand job costing and WIP?

It is the center of our practice. A work-in-process schedule, costs-in-excess-of-billings, retainage, and job-level margin are the mechanics we have rebuilt for trade and repair businesses for a decade. If your P&L swings wildly month to month, missing WIP is usually why.

Can you get our books ready for an SBA lender or bonding agent?

Yes. Covenant packages and bonding financials are a standard deliverable. One client's SBA reporting went out clean enough that the lender had zero follow-up questions. The goal is books that answer questions before they get asked.

We are months behind. How fast can you catch us up?

We have caught up 18 months of books in about two weeks. We scope from your actual file, quote a fixed cleanup price starting at $2,500, and tell you the timeline before we start.

How much does monthly bookkeeping cost for a contractor?

Monthly bookkeeping starts at $699 a month and moves with transaction volume and job count. Controller and fractional CFO work starts at $3,500 a month. The rate card is public so you can budget before you ever book a call.

Do you do taxes?

No. We do the books, the job costing, and the financial leadership, then hand your tax accountant a clean, organized file. Most tax accountants love us for it.

KLYVNT Advisors provides bookkeeping, controller, and fractional CFO services for founder-led businesses in South Florida. Book a call.