Bookkeeping for Painters in Teaneck

Helping business owners gain financial clarity, improve cash flow, and increase profitability.

What's Covered on This Page

• What Accounting for Painters Really Involves
• Why Painters Need an Accountant with a Solid Background in the Trades
• The Most Common Bookkeeping Mistakes Painting Companies Make
• How Job Costing Transforms a Painting Company’s Financials
• What to Expect When You Start Working With a Painter's Bookkeeper
• Do I really need a bookkeeper who knows the painting trade, or will any bookkeeper work?
• What happens to my books during Teaneck's slow winter months when cash flow drops?
• How do I handle 1099s for the subcontractors I pay throughout the year?
• Can I keep running my painting business out of one bank account for personal and business expenses?
• How does remote bookkeeping actually work for a painter who's on job sites all day?
• How do I know if a job I just finished was actually profitable?

Need bookkeeping for painters?

973-453-5052

Book A Free Consultation. Call Capgro Bookkeeping Services LLC now.

What Accounting for Painters Really Involves

Many painters equate bookkeeping with stuffing receipts into a shoebox and dropping them off at the start of tax season. that instinct. But paint company bookkeeping does more than just sort through the paperwork of a paint business, it touches all the cash that comes into and goes out of a paint business.

This is the list of what we monitor and control for our paint customers in Teaneck:

• Cost per job. All the primer gallons, the rolls of masking tape, the time your work crew puts in on a single project in the Glenpointe area is allocated to that project. Now, you will know exactly how much each project costs you.
• Material costs. Paint, brushes, drop cloths, caulk, sandpaper. The costs for these add up very quickly. They will be categorized so that you know where your money goes every month.
• Labor costs. Whether you employ W-2 workers, 1099 contractors or both, every payment you make gets entered. There is no need to do this at the end of the year.
• Income by type of work. Work inside the house has a different profit margin than work outside. Commercial work carries a different margin than work for individual homes. All of this gets broken out in a way that tells you where your money is coming from.
• Vehicle and equipment costs. Your truck, your sprayer, your ladders. They all get counted in the books as a deduction.

We see a lot of painters call us once they wrap up a busy season and have no clue if they turned a profit. We’re fixing that problem.

We configure our paint company client to use QuickBooks Online in a way that keeps their books consistent and organized month over month. We don’t just throw figures into the appropriate boxes. We design the paint company’s chart of accounts around the way a paint company works, so when you run the report, the numbers make sense to you. Not just your CPA.

Consider the large painting you just finished outside. How much did you come out ahead? Would you be able to answer a buddy about your overall profit percent once you subtract out paint, labor and gas? Fewer painters would know how to answer that question.

In more than 20 years of experience with accounting and bookkeeping and specifically for construction in the home services industry, we have constructed an accounting process tailored specifically for contractors like you. Our painting business bookkeeping services work from home. That means there is no need to travel anywhere or to show up at an office, and the work gets done right here in Teaneck while you focus on your work.

Why Painters Need an Accountant with a Solid Background in the Trades

While a normal bookkeeper can record income and expenses, that will be fine for a coffee shop, but your paint business functions differently. home services industry clients home services industry clients

You’re managing a dozen or so projects at once. Maybe it’s a small touch up for a home in the Glenpointe area, another is a large scale repaint that takes weeks to finish. Each job will have unique material expenses, labor hours and overall profitability.

The bookkeeper who doesn't know job costing would just lump all of that together and you'd be guessing which jobs were profitable.

We see it all the time. A painter calls us because his books are fine, he's not in debt, the bank account looks good, the taxes are paid, but he has no idea if that last job he did outside was a profit or a loss. That is exactly the gap a regular bookkeeper will always leave wide open.

The painting contracting business is different because:

• Material costs depend on the kind of work
• Labor costs depend on how many workers are on the crew
• Subs costs vary on the job
• Cash flow varies with the season (especially in the winter in Teaneck)

An experienced bookkeeper who has worked with painters would know all of that already. They wouldn't make you explain what happened in August versus February or why you spent $4,000 on one job and $200 on another. They already know the context.

So why are you still explaining your business to a bookkeeper who views it like every other business?

With 20 years of experience in the accounting and home services industries, we've built our business around serving contractors, not retail businesses or restaurants. Painters, roofers, plumbers. The ones who have to track their work at the job level to grow instead of guessing.

Your books need to be able to tell you exactly where your money is going on every project, not just that it is going somewhere.

The Most Common Bookkeeping Mistakes Painting Companies Make

We see a few issues time and again with painting companies in Teaneck. A painter completes a big exterior job. He gets paid, puts the check in the bank, and doesn't record the cost of materials at all. Three months later, he's asking "Why do I have so much cash in the bank but no net income?"

We see this one a lot, but it's not the only one. Here are all the most common bookkeeping mistakes we see at the companies we bring onboard:

• Commingling personal and business expenses in one account
• Not tracking the individual paint, primer, tape and supply costs per job
• Not recording cash payments to day laborers and subcontractors
• Missing out 1099s to subs you paid $600 or more
• Putting every expense in one bucket rather than the correct specific one

The last one hurts the most at tax time. With every single expense grouped into just a "Miscellaneous" or "Supplies," you have no idea what your exact costs were. You can’t make informed choices about which types of work to go after in the next season. No, this painter who called us isn’t poor. They are simply busy. You are in the Glenpointe area at 7 AM quoting a condo repaint, then leading your crew until the sun goes down. Bookkeeping has a habit of getting pushed off until late Sunday night, and when that doesn’t work out, it gets pushed to next month. Then, you just don’t want to do it.

The Subcontractor Trap

That one takes a lot of painters off guard. You bring a sub on for a couple weeks in your busy season. You pay them cash, or Zelle. You do not bother getting their W-9 and keeping a file on them, or any type of. Now the IRS is demanding that you fill out 1099 filing. And you probably do not even have a legal name on file for them. You know, 1099 preparation and filings for that very reason.

Now, if your books currently seem as if they were a junk drawer, know that this is normal. It does not mean you are in failure. It means you need someone who understands the painting business to sort this through, but also to get it cleaned up for future. And that is why our bookkeeping cleanup services exist.

Need help with bookkeeping for painters?

973-453-5052

Book A Free Consultation. Capgro Bookkeeping Services LLC is ready to help.

How Job Costing Transforms a Painting Company’s Financials

Here is what we encounter all the time with painters in Teaneck: You finish up a large exterior job. Deposit the check. Feel good for the month. But did that job make you money? Most painters cannot tell you.

That is what job costing solves.

It is simply the practice of tracking every single dollar related to that job. It is not just what the client paid you. It is everything you had to spend to deliver that job. When we setup job costing for a crew, we are breaking down each and every job into very specific categories, such as:

• Labor hours of any painter assigned to this exact job.
• Paint, primer, caulk, and other materials purchased for the job location
• Other equipment expenses (sprayer rental, scissor lift fees, etc.)
• Drive time and fuel cost to deliver your crew to the job, and back

Let us say, for example, you bid $4,800 on a condo repaint, somewhere in the vicinity of Glenpointe. It all looked like profit to your eyes. But your crew got stuck in several weather delays, you used 30 percent more primer in the first coat than you planned, and you sent an extra painter to the job on the second day. Without job costing, the $4,800 is just sitting in your bank account like a great payday. If you have setup the job costing in QuickBooks, then you will be able to see that the real profit margin is 8%, not the 35% you expected.

And this completely changes the way you will bid the following job.

We track these expenses every month for our clients, and trends start showing up very quickly. Your interior painting jobs in large apartment complexes may always struggle on labor cost. Or your exterior, residential painting may very well be your best moneymaker. You cannot know how to run a business if you do not have this knowledge. And you will just be guessing.

And guessers? They are the ones wondering why they were busy all season, but broke come December. According to the SBA, poor financial tracking is one of the top reasons small businesses fail in their first five years. Job costing is how you stop running your painting company on gut feelings. It turns every completed project into a lesson about what to charge next time. Need some help setting this up for your crew? Give us a call.

What to Expect When You Start Working With a Painter's Bookkeeper

Most painters that call us tell us the same story. They have a shoebox of receipts, an account they haven't reconciled in months, and a nagging feeling that they are leaving money on the table. Sound like you?

This is what happens once you decide to get your books in order.

1. We start with a free bookkeeping consultation. You tell us what you do in your painting business, how many crews you run, what software you use (or don't), and where you are struggling.
2. We look at your current books. If things look messy, we will talk about a bookkeeping cleanup. If we are starting fresh, we build your QuickBooks Online correctly right from the start.
3. We build a chart of accounts that actually works for a painter. Your paint and materials are not lumped together with "supplies". Your labor costs are tracked per project.
4. Each month, the ongoing work. This means bank feeds, expense sorting, invoicing follow-up, job costing reports, etc. You get a clear picture of your numbers without having to do it yourself.

The whole onboarding process takes about a week for most painters in Teaneck. We have contractors near the Glenpointe area with three different crews running that thought it was going to take them forever to get their books in order. It took them five business days!

One thing we hear a lot is "I did not know bookkeeping could actually help me make decisions." That is the part that a lot of people miss. This isn't just about being organized, it's about having the information to decide what projects make you money, and which projects are slowly eating away your profit.

And because we operate remotely, you do not have to leave the job site to meet us and waste your afternoon. We work together on everything using QuickBooks Online and we have a call once a month. You stay where you need to be. We stay with your numbers.

But here is the game changer. After the first full month, you get a job costing report that breaks down profit margins by project. And a lot of Teaneck painters are surprised by what they see in it. That huge exterior paint project in the city center might have made a lot less than a relatively small interior paint project at a condo complex.

Need some help working this out? Give us a call!

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about bookkeeping for painters services in Teaneck

Ready to Get Started?

Book A Free Consultation. Call 973-453-5052 today.