general contractor bookkeeping
Your contracting books reconciled, job by job, with you in command of every correction
Draw schedules, change orders, and sub payments pile up until your books stop reflecting which jobs actually made money. TeamShift reconciles your last 90 days against the bank feed, matches every deposit and check to the right job, and produces a complete packet of flagged exceptions and proposed corrections. You review and approve each job-cost reclassification before it posts. The outcome you get: a reconciled ledger, a clean job-cost picture, and a clear trail for your CPA — delivered as a deterministic operation you control.
Direct answer
Direct answers about general contractor bookkeeping
What is TeamShift's general contractor bookkeeping service?
Draw schedules, change orders, and sub payments pile up until your books stop reflecting which jobs actually made money. TeamShift reconciles your last 90 days against the bank feed, matches every deposit and check to the right job, and produces a complete packet of flagged exceptions and proposed corrections. You review and approve each job-cost reclassification before it posts. The outcome you get: a reconciled ledger, a clean job-cost picture, and a clear trail for your CPA — delivered as a deterministic operation you control. TeamShift turns the service into a reviewed workflow, not a self-serve dashboard the owner has to configure alone.
What does the customer receive?
The customer receives books cleaned & reconciled plus a clear handoff of completed work, blockers, and decisions that still need review.
What stays human-approved?
Pricing, customer commitments, dispatch decisions, accounting writebacks, refunds, policy exceptions, and unclear edge cases stay with the approved reviewer.
Can this start from a template?
Yes. The related TeamShift marketplace outcome acts as the starting template, then TeamShift adjusts the workflow around the customer source systems, approval rules, and business context.
Positioning
Built for searchers who already have the problem.
Draw schedules, change orders, and sub payments pile up until your books stop reflecting which jobs actually made money. TeamShift reconciles your last 90 days against the bank feed, matches every deposit and check to the right job, and produces a complete packet of flagged exceptions and proposed corrections. You review and approve each job-cost reclassification before it posts. The outcome you get: a reconciled ledger, a clean job-cost picture, and a clear trail for your CPA — delivered as a deterministic operation you control.
The handoff is intentionally plain. TeamShift scopes the general contractor bookkeeping workflow, maps it to Books cleaned & reconciled, and shows you what will be gathered, drafted, sent, or held. Routine work can move quickly once the rules are approved. Pricing, scheduling promises, payments, account changes, and anything unclear come back to a person before it leaves the system.
Early-stage note: TeamShift is not using invented customer logos or made-up case studies. Named results will be published only after live customer work is complete and the customer approves the reference. Until then, these pages describe the operating workflow, the review gate, and the exact handoff you should expect.
The problem
Why GC books drift into guesswork at the job-cost layer
A general contractor's books break at job costs first. A single project can carry three or four draws, a stack of change orders, and a dozen sub payments.
- Owner-draw deposits split across jobs lose their cost coding and distort every margin comparison.
- Change orders billed but never recorded leave real revenue sitting uncounted in the bank.
- Sub payments and material runs land in the wrong job or an untracked expense bucket.
Workflow
How TeamShift delivers a reconciled packet before anything is written
TeamShift pulls your last 90 days from your accounting file and your connected bank feed, then matches each transaction to a job using your existing chart of accounts and job names. Where a deposit, check, or sub payment does not reconcile cleanly, the operation flags the exception with the proposed correct coding and the reason.
- Sources mapped: bank feed plus your QuickBooks or accounting file over the trailing 90 days.
- Each flagged exception names the suspected job, the proposed code, and the specific reason it was flagged.
- No entry posts until you approve it — your approval triggers the write; nothing runs ahead of it.
Control surface
What you approve and what you own at the end
You open one packet, sorted by job, with unreconciled items at the top and a plain-language note on each line. For every flagged transaction you approve, reject, or ask a question.
- A single job-sorted packet replaces scattered spreadsheets and cross-referencing multiple reports.
- Approve, reject, or flag each correction in one pass — accessible on your phone if needed.
- Every posted change carries a note so your CPA can follow the trail without asking you to reconstruct it.
Durability
Why this stays a reliable recurring wedge for contractors
Bookkeeping cleanup is a repeat, deadline-driven need for general contractors — the books drift each season and tax deadlines force the reckoning. A page built around the real GC pain, job-cost reconciliation across draws and change orders, answers the specific question that generic small-business bookkeeping copy never reaches.
- Bookkeeping cleanup is a repeat, deadline-driven search — seasonal drift makes it recur every quarter.
- Job-cost-specific copy outranks generic small-business bookkeeping pages for contractors searching their exact problem.
- Internal links to monthly summary, quote follow-up, and reconciliation outcomes deepen topical authority.
Questions
Before you request it
How far back does TeamShift clean up my contracting books?
TeamShift reconciles the last 90 days by default, matching every deposit, check, and sub payment against your bank feed and accounting file. Ninety days captures the drift from recent draws and change orders while keeping the correction packet small enough to approve in one sitting. Longer windows can be scoped if you have gone unreconciled for a full season — the operation scales to the backlog.
Will TeamShift change my books automatically?
No. TeamShift delivers flagged exceptions and proposed corrections; nothing posts until you approve it. Every job-cost reclassification, and anything touching pricing or payments, is gated to you as the owner. You approve or reject each line, and the rest waits with a note. Your ledger changes exactly when and how you direct it to — that is the design, not a limitation.
Does this replace my bookkeeper or CPA?
No. TeamShift does the reconciliation work and hands you and your bookkeeper a clean, job-sorted packet with a documented note on every proposed change. Your bookkeeper or CPA continues doing the accounting and filing; they just start from reconciled, job-costed numbers instead of a backlog of unmatched transactions. The outcome is that your accountant spends their time on accounting, not reconstruction.