Most bookkeepers are generalists. They can reconcile a bank account and close a month for a dentist, a boutique, or an electrical contractor without much difference in approach — and that's exactly the problem. Electrical contracting isn't a generic small business. You're running service calls and multi-month projects out of the same company, paying crews for both, buying material against jobs that might not invoice for weeks, and — if you do any commercial or government work — filing certified payroll that a typical bookkeeper has never heard of.
InsightTrack Bookkeeping exists because we got tired of watching electrical contractors get books that were technically accurate and practically useless. A profit and loss statement that lumps together a $400 outlet repair and a $180,000 tenant build-out tells you nothing about which one is actually worth doing more of. We build your books around jobs first, categories second — the same way you already think about your business, just with the numbers to back it up.
We work with residential service electricians, commercial contractors, and specialty shops (panel upgrades, EV charger installs, low-voltage, solar interconnects) anywhere in the U.S. Everything runs on QuickBooks Online, everything is built around job costing from day one, and every engagement starts with a free 30-minute call where we look at what you have now and tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.
What We Handle
Monthly Bookkeeping & Financial Statements
Clean, reconciled books and job-costed financial statements delivered every month — built for how electrical contractors actually bill work.
Learn more →Job Costing for Electrical Contractors
See exactly which jobs make money and which ones are quietly draining your margin — down to labor burden, material markup, and change orders.
Learn more →QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup
A QuickBooks Online file built for a trade business — correct chart of accounts, job costing turned on, and years of backlog cleaned up if needed.
Learn more →Payroll & Certified Payroll
Payroll built for electrical contractors, including Davis-Bacon prevailing wage, weekly certified payroll reports, and union reporting.
Learn more →Cash Flow Forecasting & KPI Dashboards
See a tight month coming before it happens, and track the handful of numbers that actually predict whether your shop is getting more profitable.
Learn more →Tax-Ready Financials & CPA Coordination
Clean, job-costed financials handed to your CPA at tax time — plus the quarterly numbers they need for estimated payments, so April has no surprises.
Learn more →Why Generic Bookkeeping Fails Electrical Contractors
A generalist bookkeeper's job is to make sure income and expenses land in the right accounts and the bank reconciles. That's necessary, but it's the easy 80% of contractor accounting. The hard 20% — the part that actually changes how you run the business — is knowing whether Job #4471 made money after labor burden, material, and the truck roll, or whether your $65/hour billing rate is actually covering what a service tech costs you once you count payroll taxes, workers' comp, and drive time.
We've taken over books from bookkeepers who were perfectly competent and still left owners flying blind. Material purchases sitting in a general 'Supplies' account instead of tagged to a job. Payroll booked as one lump expense with no split between service and project labor. No work-in-progress schedule, so a big commercial job's revenue recognition was either all up front or all at completion — neither of which reflects reality. None of that is wrong, exactly. It's just built for a business that doesn't run on jobs, and yours does.
Job Costing: The Core of What We Do
Job costing means every material purchase, every labor hour, every subcontractor bill, and every piece of overhead gets tied back to the job it belongs to — not just categorized by type. Once that's in place, your job profitability report tells you which service calls are worth dispatching for, which project types carry your best margins, and which recurring commercial clients are quietly costing you money once you factor in change-order friction and slow-pay terms.
For electrical specifically, that means splitting labor between billable field time and shop/drive time, tracking material markup against actual vendor cost (not list price), and separating small-ticket service work from larger project work so the two don't distort each other's numbers. It also means building change orders into the job record as they happen, so a project's final profitability reflects what actually got built, not just what the original bid said.
Monthly Close, Built Around Jobs
Every month, you get a closed set of books and three things most bookkeepers don't produce for contractors: a job profitability report ranking every open and recently closed job by margin, a work-in-progress (WIP) schedule showing billed-versus-earned on active projects, and a plain-English summary of what moved and why. No jargon dump, no 40-tab spreadsheet you have to interpret yourself.
We also flag the things that matter before they become a problem — a job that's burning more labor than it billed, a customer stretching payment terms past 60 days, overhead creeping up as a share of revenue. The goal is that your monthly call with us takes twenty minutes and you walk away knowing exactly where to focus.
QuickBooks Online, Set Up for a Trade Business
If you're already on QuickBooks Online, we can usually work with what's there — cleaning up the chart of accounts, rebuilding the item list around how you actually bill (service call, hourly, T&M, fixed-price project, change order), and turning on class or project tracking so job costing works the way it's supposed to instead of fighting the software.
If your books are a mess — categories that don't make sense, months that were never reconciled, a chart of accounts with 200 line items nobody remembers the reason for — cleanup is a defined, scoped project, not an open-ended bill. We tell you up front what shape things are in and what it takes to get current before monthly service starts.
Not sure where to start?
A free 30-minute call is the fastest way to find out — no obligation, no sales pitch.
Book a Free Discovery CallPayroll, Including Certified and Prevailing Wage
Payroll for an electrical contractor isn't just gross-to-net. If you do any commercial, municipal, or federally funded work, you're likely dealing with certified payroll and prevailing wage requirements under the Davis-Bacon Act or state equivalents — weekly certified payroll reports (WH-347 or your state's version), fringe benefit tracking, and apprentice-to-journeyman ratio documentation that has to be exactly right or it holds up your draw.
We run payroll (or work alongside the payroll provider you already have) with those requirements built in from the start: correct wage determinations per job, fringe benefits credited properly, certified payroll reports generated on the schedule your contracts require, and union reporting handled correctly if you're a signatory shop. This is one of the areas where a generalist bookkeeper's unfamiliarity turns into real project risk — a rejected certified payroll report can freeze a draw on a job that's already underway.
Cash Flow and the KPIs That Actually Matter
Electrical contracting has a specific cash flow shape: material goes out before it's reimbursed, payroll is due every week or two regardless of when a job invoices, and retainage on commercial work can sit for months after the work is done. We build a rolling cash flow forecast around that reality, so you can see a tight month coming instead of discovering it when payroll's due.
Beyond cash flow, we track the handful of KPIs that actually move the needle for a shop like yours: gross margin by job type (service versus project), labor efficiency (billed hours versus paid hours), overhead recovery rate, and average days to collect. These live on a simple monthly dashboard, not buried in a report you have to go digging for.
Tax-Ready Financials and CPA Coordination
We are a bookkeeping firm, not a CPA firm, and we're upfront about that line. What we do is make sure your CPA gets clean, accurate, job-costed financials at tax time instead of a shoebox — which usually means a faster, cheaper tax return and fewer surprises. We also track the numbers your CPA needs for quarterly estimated payments so April isn't the first time anyone looks at the year's profit.
If you already have a CPA, we coordinate directly with them: matching depreciation schedules, confirming owner draws and distributions are recorded correctly, and making sure equipment purchases and Section 179 elections are reflected in the books before they hand you a return. If you don't have a CPA yet, we can point you toward one who understands contractor accounting.
How It Works
It starts with a free 30-minute discovery call. We look at your current books (or lack of them), your QuickBooks setup, and how your jobs are structured, and tell you plainly whether we're a fit and what it would cost. If your books need cleanup first, we scope that as its own project with a clear end point. Once you're current, monthly service runs on a fixed schedule: bookkeeping and reconciliation, job costing updates, a closed month with reports, and a short call to walk through what matters.
We work with electrical contractors anywhere in the U.S. — everything is handled remotely through QuickBooks Online, video calls, and a shared document portal, so your location doesn't limit which bookkeeper you can hire. What matters is that the person doing your books understands what a change order does to job profitability and what a rejected certified payroll report does to your draw schedule.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does bookkeeping cost for an electrical contracting business?
Monthly bookkeeping pricing depends on transaction volume, whether you run certified payroll, and how many active jobs you're costing at once — most electrical contractors land in a predictable monthly range we quote after seeing your books on the discovery call. If cleanup is needed first, that's a separate fixed-scope project so you know the full cost before anything starts.
Do you do our taxes?
No — we're a bookkeeping firm, not a CPA firm. What we do is keep your books clean and job-costed all year so that whoever prepares your return (yours or one we can refer you to) gets accurate financials instead of a mess to untangle every March. We also track the numbers your CPA needs for quarterly estimated tax payments.
What is job costing and why does it matter for an electrical contractor?
Job costing means every material purchase, labor hour, and subcontractor bill gets tied to the specific job it belongs to, not just a general expense category. Without it, your profit and loss statement can look healthy while individual jobs — often your biggest ones — are actually losing money once labor burden and change orders are counted. It's the difference between knowing your overall margin and knowing which jobs are creating it.
Can you handle certified payroll and prevailing wage requirements?
Yes. If you take on commercial, municipal, or federally funded electrical work, we run payroll with Davis-Bacon or state prevailing wage requirements built in — correct wage determinations, fringe benefit tracking, and weekly certified payroll reports generated on the schedule your contract requires. We also handle union reporting for signatory shops.
Our QuickBooks is a mess — can you fix it?
Usually, yes. Cleanup is scoped as its own fixed-price project before monthly service starts: we review what's there, tell you honestly what shape it's in, and give you a clear price and timeline to get current. We don't start monthly bookkeeping on top of books that aren't reconciled — it just recreates the same mess every month.
How is this different from a generalist bookkeeper?
A generalist bookkeeper keeps your bank reconciled and your categories sorted, which matters but isn't enough for a contractor. We build job costing, work-in-progress schedules, and certified payroll into your books from the start, because those are the things that determine whether an electrical contracting business is actually profitable — not just whether the books balance.
Do you work with electrical contractors outside your home state?
Yes, anywhere in the U.S. Everything runs through QuickBooks Online, video calls, and a shared document portal, so where your office is doesn't matter. What matters is that you get a bookkeeper who understands job costing and contractor payroll, which is a smaller pool than it should be.
How fast can we get started?
After the free discovery call, timing depends on whether your books need cleanup first. If they're already current and reconciled, monthly service can typically start within one to two weeks. If cleanup is needed, we'll give you a clear timeline for that project before monthly service begins.
Ready to get your books under control?
Book a free discovery call and see exactly how it would work for your business.
Book a Free Discovery Call