Bookkeeping & cash flow insights for business owners.
Practical guides, decision frameworks, and contractor-specific advice. No fluff, no generic "hire an accountant" posts.
What's new.
Know Your Numbers as a Contractor: The 3 Instruments
A $4.5M contractor couldn't job cost, so I built the fix. The 3 instruments every contractor needs, plus a free Mini CFO Dashboard.
Read more →Does Contractor Software Track Profit? The Honest Answer
A $576-a-month stack makes your phone ring but can't tell you if a job made money. What syncs to your books, what doesn't, and the fix.
Read more →QuickBooks Setup for Contractors: Why the Default Can't See Your Jobs
The default QuickBooks files your taxes but can't show job profit. The 5 setup fixes that make it construction-ready.
Read more →How to Price a Job as a Contractor (Margin vs Markup)
Markup is not margin, and confusing them is how contractors stay busy and broke. How to price a job so it actually makes money.
Read more →Phantom Income: 4 Bookkeeping Mistakes That Inflate Your Tax Bill
Phantom income is tax on money you never made. The 4 bookkeeping mistakes that create it, and how to catch each one.
Read more →Construction Cash Flow Problems: Why a $1.2M Year Ended With $12,000
A $1.2M year ended with $12,000 in the bank. Where the cash goes when you grow, and how to see it coming.
Read more →Labor Burden 101: What Contractors Get Wrong
Why your $28/hr employee actually costs you $42/hr — and how that wrecks your job margin.
Read more →Contractor Receipt Tracking: How 1 Untagged Receipt Breaks Your Next 10 Bids
1 untagged receipt made a 24% job look like a 35% job, and the next 10 bids inherited the error. How job-level tracking fixes it.
Read more →5 Construction Bookkeeper Red Flags (and How to Fix Them)
Your books can be accurate and still useless. The 5 red flags that show your bookkeeping is missing what matters.
Read more →Job Costing for Contractors: How to Know If a Job Made Money
A $45,000 kitchen planned to net $14,000 closed at $1,200. Where the money went, and how to see it before the job ends.
Read more →The 3-Step Monthly Bookkeeping System for Contractors
Stop the tax-season chaos. A simple weekly-date, Big-3-reports, checklist routine for year-round peace of mind.
Read more →Browse by topic.
Bookkeeping Basics
How to set up, run, and maintain clean books. For owners who do it themselves or want to understand what their bookkeeper is doing.
Get the bookkeeper toolkit →Pricing & Profitability
Labor burden, job costing, service-line margin, and how to price so your business actually makes money.
Read the latest post →Cash Flow Management
Forecasting, Profit First, bank-flow templates, and how to avoid the cash shortfalls that sink small businesses.
Get the template →Startup & Entity Guidance
EIN, LLC vs. S-corp, sales tax, chart of accounts — setting up for year three, not just year one.
See setup services →Monthly & Quarterly Checklists
The exact checklists we walk through with clients every close cycle. Steal them.
Get the checklist →Tax Prep Best Practices
How to hand your CPA a clean file every April. How to avoid the common small-business tax traps.
Get the year-end kit →Behind the Books: A Business Builder Show.
Joe's YouTube show — bookkeeping, pricing, and cash flow strategy broken down for business owners who'd rather watch than skim.
Free resources while you're here.
Checklists, templates, and our signature DIY-or-Delegate Scorecard — all free, all built for business owners.