Bookkeeping for Roofers in Teaneck

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

What's Covered on This Page

• Teaneck Roofing Contractors Deserve More Than Generic Bookkeeping
• How to Accurately Track and Account for Teaneck Roofing Changes Orders and Job Costing
• Revenue Spikes During Storm Season Need Special Bookkeeping Attention
• NJ Sales Tax Rules and Contractor Compliance Roofers Often Get Wrong
• Clean Books Help Teaneck Roofers Get Bonded And Land Bigger Contracts
• Why does a Teaneck roofing contractor need a bookkeeper who knows the trade?
• What is job costing, and why does it matter for my roofing business?
• How should change orders be recorded so they don't hurt my profit margins?
• How does storm season in Teaneck affect my bookkeeping needs?
• What common bookkeeping mistakes do Teaneck roofing contractors make most often?
• When is the right time to stop doing my own books and hire a roofing bookkeeper?

Need bookkeeping for roofers?

973-453-5052

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

Teaneck Roofing Contractors Deserve More Than Generic Bookkeeping

The Teaneck roofing contractors we meet all share a similar history. They may have kept their own expense and income records in a shoebox or Excel spreadsheet or paid an accountant to simply review their books annually. And for a while, maybe that approach worked for them.

That’s until their business starts expanding.

Roofing bookkeeping is different from managing other trades like landscaping or plumbing. It includes deposits from materials vendors, payments for sub-contractors, permit fees, and progress billing for jobs that can sometimes span weeks or months. A bookkeeper who specializes in accounting for a retail store or a restaurant wouldn’t really understand the complexities and why your financials are so messy. They wouldn’t understand what a progress billing schedule is. They couldn’t track profitability on a job-by-job basis and, more importantly, wouldn’t recognize an underlying problem when the Teaneck job was complete with roof deck and underlayment replacements made yet the financials showed that job actually generated a loss.

The following are the most frequent accounting errors we see happen with accounting practices that lack roofing-specific expertise:

• The cost for materials is not assigned and allocated by the individual jobs.
• Payment made to your subcontractors is recorded months later.
• Income from insurance restoration roofing projects is being lumped with work done out of your cash wallet.
• The purchase of out-of-state materials and their respective sales taxes are not properly tracked.

Any one of these common accounting problems will negatively impact the amount of money in your wallet. Not tomorrow. Today.

That is a very common problem we were founded to resolve. With twenty plus years of accounting experience, all of our accounting services have always been geared toward home services industry contractors like Teaneck Roofing Contractors. The life cycle of each and every roofing job needs to be meticulously tracked from when a roof estimate is written until that last invoice is issued. That’s job costing. It means you never leave money on the table or wonder why your company was profitable in the past and not now.

Many of our roofing clients call us to say they had their best year on paper and they have no idea what happened to all the money. That’s a pretty common scenario for Teaneck roofers! The disconnect between gross revenue generated by the company versus what is in your bank account typically boils down to one thing. How your books were originally set up. Or more aptly, how they weren’t.

You don’t need to continue to second guess yourself. Get your bookkeeping services set up to account for all the ins and outs of the way home services companies and Teaneck roofing contractors operate.

How to Accurately Track and Account for Teaneck Roofing Changes Orders and Job Costing

The majority of roofs to be re-shingled are over homes built in Teaneck in the 1940’s, 50’s or 60’s. And when a roofing contractor is on the roof, taking shingles off an old 40-year home, they can uncover all types of surprises. bookkeeping services for home service businesses bookkeeping services for home service businesses bookkeeping services for home service businesses

A roof deck that was rotted through. Sub-shingles that were severely water damaged. Flashing that’s been in place since the original house was built. Those are all common and can each result in a change order to the scope of work. And that change order has to go on the books in a way that reflects the profit and margin of the entire project.

It happens every day. A roofer quotes a job for X dollars, the scope expands, the job costs aren't adjusted, and then everyone's happy. You bill the homeowner and get paid. The owner thinks that was a winning job. But in reality, you spent more on materials than you planned, you worked overtime on crew hours, and you lost money on what you thought was a profitable job.

Change Order Job Costing in QuickBooks

This is how it, to make sure the job costs are always right:

1. We create each roofing project separately in QuickBooks Online and track the with a project bid.
2. Then, a separate change order line gets created within the job to track the initial estimate to what was added.
3. Every material cost and labor hour is then linked to a particular job, and a particular phase of that job.
4. Once the project is done, we run a job costing report, and you're shown the gross profit on your base estimate contract AND the gross profit on the change order(s).

This is very helpful. Some of the roofing companies we work with in the Glenpointe community tell us their change order jobs are actually more profitable than their base estimate contracts. They only know this because they do proper job costing in QuickBooks.

And, again, the biggest thing most contractors miss is that change orders aren't just about getting paid for your extra work; the change order can also change your material cost, your labor allocation, and even your sales tax obligation. A single undocumented change order can have your profit margins swing dramatically on a $15,000 project and over multiple projects, the difference could be tens of thousands of dollars in a year. Think about this if you are running five or six crews for the whole of Bergen County!

So, what is your bottom line on your jobs? Give us a call, we will show you where your profit margins stand.

Over twenty years of experience in the accounting and bookkeeping field is what you can expect from our team. Every roofing company and their projects you manage deserve to have clean and accurate numbers. Job cost estimating is a huge part of our bookkeeping services for home service businesses.

Revenue Spikes During Storm Season Need Special Bookkeeping Attention

There's a big storm that hits in Teaneck, you are going to be getting calls nonstop. And that's great for business, but that also puts your bookkeeping into disarray.

During the spring and summer, the volume of active jobs for roofers can go from 5 to 25 in a very short time. Material orders go up threefold. New subcontractors may be used. Insurance claim payments may come weeks or even months down the road, and you have to put together the puzzle of where everything fits within your books.

And it's not about how much you have to pay and how much you have to invoice, but when, for what and for whom. Because storm work is often done by insurance, it may mean adjuster review, supplements, and waiting for payments on insurance claims. It's possible that $40,000 could be spent on materials and labor for a given storm job before any of it gets paid by the homeowner or the insurance carrier.

You can't figure out if you're making money or just keeping busy without the right tracking.

What to Pay Attention to During a Revenue Spike

Here's what we keep an eye on during storm season:

• Accounts receivable can balloon quickly, keep every insurance claim separate from your retail jobs.
• Material costs can go up fast, as suppliers jack up prices in response to higher demand.
• Subcontractor payments accumulate, and 1099 compliance can lag.
• Cash flow can tighten, despite revenue figures looking great on paper.

The roofers who ended up struggling in Teaneck right after storm season did have enough work to stay busy. What they didn't have was an inkling about where the money went, which isn't a sales issue; it's a bookkeeping failure.

Our system is built around job costing, which means we keep a separate line of accounting for each storm job. Every job gets its own line in QuickBooks Online with each cost assigned to it: materials, labor, permit fees, and dump fees, all tracked to one job number. That way, you know exactly what the profit margin was on that one roof you put near the Glenpointe area when that check finally comes through.

If you don't know whether your current accounting system can handle a surge in volume, it's a problem we see fairly often. Teaneck roofing contractors generally keep their accounts lean in the slow season, and then find themselves scrambling to deal with everything when work picks up. We build the books in your accounting system so they can flex with the work, the books won't fall apart when the work increases. You should have accurate profit on every storm job before starting the next one.

Need help with bookkeeping for roofers?

973-453-5052

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

NJ Sales Tax Rules and Contractor Compliance Roofers Often Get Wrong

This is the thing that throws roofers in Teaneck the most. NJ sales tax for contractors doesn't work the same as retail sales tax, where you're charging tax on every sale. The rules differ depending on the type of work, materials, and the type of contract you're using.

To summarize: Capital improvement (like a full roof replacement) is typically sales tax exempt to your customer. However, the roofer still pays tax on the materials purchased. A repair job is different; repair and maintenance jobs are taxable to your customer. So it makes a big difference how you classify each job on your invoices.

The vast majority of roofers we work with near the Glenpointe area and throughout Teaneck don't know they need a capital improvement certificate (Form ST-8) signed by the property owner on every exempt job. If that form isn't on file, the roofer might end up liable for the tax they didn't collect. And NJ doesn't accept that you "thought it was exempt."

Mistakes We Fix Often

• Not getting the capital improvement form (Form ST-8) before starting jobs.
• Taxing exempt work, or failing to tax sales on taxable repairs.
• Not keeping the proper materials records: those bought tax-exempt versus those purchased for resale.
• Missing deadlines to file quarterly sales tax returns to NJ.

"If you don't have exemption certificates available in an audit, then you'll be hit with back taxes and penalties, which is just more money out of your pocket," explains a representative from the New Jersey Division of Taxation.

It gets tricky, though. You may be working on one job that's both a repair and capital improvement, and you'll need to break down your invoice appropriately.

You can about sales tax filing for roofing companies here, and you can set up QuickBooks for roofing so that each job is coded properly from the get-go. Don't guess when you'll be doing sales tax filings, or when the state audits you, and be ready when they call you.

If you're not sure about your past filing, let us know and we can check for you.

Clean Books Help Teaneck Roofers Get Bonded And Land Bigger Contracts

You ever wonder why some roofers in Teaneck land the commercial jobs while others only stay on the residential small jobs?

It's not just skill. The other thing is, surety companies and general contractors want to see your books to bond you.

And that is a big reason, if you don't have solid books, with invoices and job costing properly in the system, you won't be able to get those big commercial contracts because of what you present to the general contractor and the surety company. I've had a few roofers call up, say, oh man, I just got denied for a bond and I have no idea why. And I look it over and, yeah, you have to clean those up before you can present them to a surety company.

Here are some things that a GC or a surety company is going to ask to see:

• Profit & Loss Statements
• Balance sheet
• Accounts receivable and payable aging reports
• And proof of consistent cash flow over the last 12 months or so.

And if you can't turn those in to the GC or to the surety company pretty quickly, you don't get the bond. And your competitor down the street does because they have clean books that are current. So what does it mean to have clean books?

Clean books means that all materials purchased are broken down appropriately. All payments to subs are recorded. And all jobs in QuickBooks Online are tied to the revenue and to the costs so that you know exactly where you are on profit and margins for a specific roof. We set this up for contractors near Glenpointe and in Teaneck.

It can also mean that you know which jobs are actually profitable and which ones are not. A tear-off and new roof on a two-family may look really profitable, until you realize you're paying for a dump truck that sits on the driveway while the dumpster gets filled, plus all of the extra man-days that you had to put in on the roof because of rain and all of the material overages that happened because of all of the waste. So you need to be able to track job costs in your system to be able to see exactly what each of your jobs are costing you.

The roofers that really cleaned those books up raised their rates on certain types of jobs, because they can clearly see exactly what the jobs cost and what the rates should be. And it's more than just bookkeeping. It's how you grow.

If you are interested in cleaning up your books to be ready for the next big contract, just give us a call.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about bookkeeping for roofers services in Teaneck

Ready to Get Started?

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