By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Direct answer: in a job costing system, overhead cost allocation works through a clearing account. Actual overhead — rent, utilities, administrative salaries, insurance — is recorded there as it is incurred; a portion is then charged to each job using a consistent base such as labor hours or direct costs and credited back

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Direct answer: overhead cost allocation is the method contractors use to spread shared costs — rent, utilities, insurance, and general office salaries — across multiple projects using a fair, reasonable formula such as project size, labor hours, or contract value. In practice it is a three-step cycle: set a predetermined

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Years after Hurricane Ian, Southwest Florida communities are still rebuilding, and much of that work runs through a Substantial Damage assessment process that determines whether a structure must be rebuilt to current code rather than simply repaired — funded through a mix of private insurance, FEMA assistance, and SBA dis

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Florida has no statewide impact fee schedule — every county and municipality sets its own, and those fees can increase substantially, as Osceola County's 2024 mobility impact fee increase demonstrated. Construction bookkeeping for a developer working across multiple Florida jurisdictions needs to budget for real, county-s

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Florida contractors face construction defect claims through a specific pre-suit process under Chapter 558 — one that involves the contractor's insurer directly, and one where recent legislation has shortened how long a claim can be brought. Construction bookkeeping needs to track warranty reserves and claim response costs

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Florida's Live Local Act has opened new multifamily development opportunities on land previously zoned commercial or industrial, and paired that opportunity with a substantial property tax exemption — one that requires an annual application by a set deadline to keep. Construction bookkeeping for a Live Local Act project

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Direct answer: under ASC 606, materials delivered to a job site but not yet installed must generally be excluded from the cost-to-cost calculation used to measure percentage of completion, and revenue equal to their cost — with no profit margin — is recognized separately until installation occurs. Skipping this carve-out

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Job-specific insurance — builder's risk, project-specific liability, performance bonds — is a real direct overhead cost every contractor needs to price into a bid. In Florida, a meaningful share of this coverage is placed in the surplus lines market rather than the standard admitted market, which adds a real, additional t

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Quoting a Florida residential job by the project, with a defined total contract price, isn't just good business practice — it's what makes compliance with Florida's contractor deposit law actually possible. Florida Statute § 489.126 measures a contractor's legal obligations against a percentage of the total contract price

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Profit margin is the single number that tells a contractor whether a job actually made money once every cost — overhead and job-specific — is accounted for. The formula itself is simple, but knowing which version of it you're calculating, and how your result compares to real industry data, is where most of the value is. C

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com A "typical" profit margin isn't the same number for every kind of contractor — a general contractor running competitive bid work operates in a genuinely different margin range than a specialty trade with licensing barriers or proprietary expertise. Construction bookkeeping should reflect what a realistic target actually

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Direct answer: the look-back method, filed on IRS Form 8697, is a required post-completion tax calculation for contractors who used the percentage-of-completion method on a long-term contract. It compares the tax you actually reported during the contract — based on cost and price estimates — against what you would have re

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com North Texas has become one of the country's leading destinations for corporate headquarters relocations — a pattern that continued into 2026 and has consistently favored large, suburban, build-to-suit campuses over downtown towers. Contractors building this specific typology run a genuinely different job than either a dow

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Dallas has used Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones to fund infrastructure supporting private development for years, and developers building within these zones are often reimbursed for eligible costs through future tax increment revenue — a payment structure genuinely different from a construction loan draw. Construction boo

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com The area around Dallas Fort Worth International Airport is one of the largest industrial and distribution submarkets in the country, driven heavily by e-commerce fulfillment demand. A meaningful share of this construction happens speculatively — built before a tenant is signed — which creates a cost-control reality genuin

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Direct answer: the right job costing software depends on how complex your projects are and how much cost detail you need. Sage Intacct offers a construction capability that tracks actual and committed costs, work in progress (WIP), and project profitability. QuickBooks Online supports job costing through its Projects feat

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Following the 2021 Surfside condominium collapse, Florida enacted milestone inspection and Structural Integrity Reserve Study requirements for condo and cooperative buildings three stories and taller. For contractors doing remediation and repair work tied to these requirements, construction bookkeeping needs to handle a f

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com The My Safe Florida Home program funds hurricane-hardening retrofits through state matching grants, administered under Florida Statute § 215.5586 — a genuinely different funding structure than insurance-claim or private-pay retrofit work. Construction bookkeeping for contractors doing this work needs to respect a strict t