Site Work & Concrete

Your work is measured by the yard and the ton. Your books should be just as precise.

The Industry

Site work and concrete contractors are the first on the job. Excavation digs it out. Foundation pours hold everything up. Paving finishes it off. Without your work done right, nothing else can happen. The precision required in the field should carry through to your books.

This trade runs on heavy equipment and heavy material costs. An excavator burns fuel every hour it runs. Concrete has to be ordered by the yard and poured on schedule. Rebar, gravel, forms, pump trucks. The costs stack up fast on every job, and margins are tight because everyone in town is competing on the same bids.

Who This Covers

Concrete contractors, excavation contractors, foundation specialists, demolition contractors, and paving companies. Anyone moving dirt, pouring concrete, or tearing things down.

The Friction

Equipment costs are hard to allocate across jobs. Materials get ordered but not always tracked to the right project. Subs and haulers need 1099s. Figuring out if you made money on the Johnson foundation requires more than checking the bank account.

What We Handle

Job costing is the core of what we do for site work and concrete contractors. Every material purchase, every equipment hour, every labor dollar gets tagged to a specific project. This moves you beyond knowing whether the company made money to knowing which jobs made money.

We also manage the paperwork that piles up. W-9s from haulers and subs before the first check goes out. Equipment records for your insurance audits. Vendor accounts at the supply house that need reconciling every month. The operational details that are easy to let slide but cause problems later.

Job Profitability

Revenue and costs tracked by project. You see the actual margin on every foundation pour, every excavation job, every demolition. This becomes the data you use to price future bids.

Equipment Cost Allocation

Your equipment works multiple jobs each month. We allocate ownership costs, fuel, maintenance, and repairs to the jobs that used the machines. Each project carries its fair share.

Common Problems

You bid tight because everyone bids tight. There was maybe 15% margin built in. Then you hit rock where the soil report said clay. The concrete truck was late and the crew stood around for two hours. A rain delay pushed the pour to the following week. Suddenly the margin is gone.

The worse problem is never knowing. The job finished. The check cleared. You moved on to the next one. But without job-level tracking, you cannot tell which projects actually made money. Profitable jobs quietly subsidize the ones that lost, and you have no data to adjust your bidding.

Undocumented Change Orders

Unforeseen conditions happen constantly. Rock, bad soil, scope changes from the GC. If the extra work doesn’t get documented and invoiced, you eat the cost and the margin disappears.

Retainage and Slow Pay

The GC holds 10% for 90 days. The draw request takes two weeks to process. Cash leaves immediately but comes back slowly. Without tracking what’s owed and when, cash flow becomes a guessing game.

What Changes

You start bidding based on facts. The next foundation job gets priced using actual data from the last ten. You know what labor really costs on a job that size. You know how much material waste to factor in. You stop guessing and start quoting with confidence.

The bank conversations improve too. When you need financing for another excavator or a larger bond for commercial work, you have clean books to show. Lenders and bonding companies trust contractors who can demonstrate job-level profitability. The numbers tell a story they want to hear.

Bidding Accuracy

Historical job data shows true costs. You see patterns like which job sizes hit margin targets and which consistently run over. Estimates get better because they are based on reality instead of hope.

Growth Readiness

Equipment financing, bonding increases, lines of credit. All require financial documentation. Clean books organized by job give lenders confidence and open doors that stay closed for contractors who cannot show their numbers.

Utah's Construction Bookkeeping Specialists