Bookkeeping for Roofing Companies
One big hailstorm and your revenue triples for a quarter, then the phone goes quiet and the crews go looking. Books that can't cost a job, hold a deposit as a liability, or track an insurance supplement will make a boom look like permanent success — right up until it isn't. We keep the recording honest so the swings don't fool you.
A deposit is not profit, and a storm is not a plan
Roofing runs on deposits and progress payments — money that shows up before the shingles do. Booked as revenue on day one, it inflates the month and sets up a nasty correction when the material and labor finally hit. Held as a liability until the work is earned, it keeps the P&L telling the truth.
Storm and insurance work adds its own bookkeeping: deductibles, supplements, and the gap between what the carrier approved and what the job actually cost. Track it loosely and you'll swear a job made money it didn't.
What clean roofing books actually tell you
Cost each job and the fog lifts. You can see real margin by roof, how much shingle and material price swings moved the quarter, and whether your crews and subs are pricing in the labor or eating it.
It also smooths the whiplash. When the books recognize revenue as it's earned, a stormy quarter and a quiet one both read accurately — so you staff and spend for the year you actually have, not the one the last hailstorm suggested.
How Kaizen runs it
We run QuickBooks Online, Ramp for cards, and Gusto for payroll, wired so transactions capture themselves instead of piling up. Then a documented month-end close lands on the same date every month, produces the same reports, and doesn't depend on any one person remembering how it's done.
We're named after kaizen, continuous improvement — which in roofing means the supplier bill coded to the wrong job gets caught in the reconciliation, not discovered at tax time. Dull and dependable.
What's included
- Transaction categorization tuned to suppliers, dumpsters, fuel, and permit fees
- Bank & credit-card reconciliations — every account, every month
- Per-job costing so margin is visible roof by roof
- Customer deposits held as liabilities until the work is earned
- Insurance / storm-work tracking — deductibles, supplements, approved vs. actual
- Material-cost visibility so shingle price swings don't hide in one line
- 1099 tracking for crews and subs and filing at year-end
- Monthly data-quality scan — uncategorized, unreconciled, imbalanced items flagged early
Pricing
Straight answers
We just came off a storm season and the books are a mess. Fixable?
That's the standard starting point. Month 1 of the Reset is the backlog: categorization, reconciliations, and per-job costing so the boom quarter finally reconciles. Most catch-ups land inside 30–45 days.
Do you handle insurance and supplement tracking?
Yes. We track deductibles, supplements, and the gap between what the carrier approved and what the job cost, so an insurance job's real margin is visible instead of assumed.
Do I have to switch software?
We work in QuickBooks Online. On spreadsheets or desktop, migration is part of setup. Already on QBO, we fix the file in place.
Is this overkill for a small roofing crew?
If you run a couple of jobs at a time and the books are clean, a good bookkeeper covers it — we'll tell you honestly. Once deposits, insurance work, and multiple crews are in play, blended books start hiding losses.
Related
Free 20-minute books assessment
We'll show you the five things we'd fix first in your books — useful whether you hire us, hire someone, or do neither.
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