Why the March scramble keeps happening

Second week of March. A Fort Worth plumbing shop with $1.8 million in revenue hands over a QuickBooks file where every dollar of cost sits in one account called "Job Materials." No cost codes. No job names. Retainage buried inside accounts receivable. The preparer can file something, sure — but nobody in that room can tell which jobs made money. That's the night an owner types "CPA for contractors Texas" into his phone and starts calling around.

The search is right. The expectation behind it usually isn't. Most contractors think they're buying a tax return. What they actually need is a set of books that produce a defensible return as a byproduct.

What a CPA for contractors in Texas should actually be doing for you

Filing the return is the last four hours of a twelve-month job. Everything that determines whether that return is accurate — and whether you overpaid — happened in the ledger between January and December.

So when you're evaluating a construction accountant, judge them on the monthly work:

  • Cost-coded job ledger. Every dollar tagged to a job and a cost type: labor, materials, subcontractor, equipment, other.
  • A monthly close on a date. Books reconciled and closed by mid-month, every month. Later than that and you're doing archaeology, not management.
  • A WIP schedule if you run jobs across month-ends — which nearly all of you do.
  • Payroll, AP and AR reconciled into the books. You run payroll through your provider; the accountant makes sure it lands correctly in the general ledger and ties to your Form 941 filings.
  • Return prep off those same books, not off a shoebox in April.

If a candidate can't tell you where retainage receivable belongs on a balance sheet, keep dialing. That's not a trick question in this industry.

Job costing is where the money is hiding

Say a roofing crew runs a commercial re-roof bid at $86,000. Actual direct costs come in at: materials $31,000, sub labor $24,000, dump fees $2,800, crane rental $1,900. That's $59,700 in job cost and $26,300 in gross profit — just over 30% on the job.

Now suppose two change orders, $4,200 and $1,650, got approved by text and never invoiced. That's $5,850 the shop earned and never collected. On a lumped chart of accounts, nobody catches it. On a cost-coded job ledger, the job report shows costs with no matching revenue line and the question gets asked in week two, not in March.

Multiply that by 40 jobs a year and you understand why two shops with identical revenue can be $200,000 apart at the bottom.

WIP and retainage: the two lines general accountants skip

Percentage-of-completion means you recognize revenue as you earn it, not as you bill it. A general accountant who does restaurants and dentists will book your draws as revenue and call it a day. That's how a good year turns into a phantom profit — or a tax bill on money you haven't earned.

Example: a $400,000 pool build is 45% complete at month end, so $180,000 is earned. You've billed $240,000 in draws. You're overbilled by $60,000. That's not profit — it's a liability, and if you spend it on the next job's materials you're financing yourself with somebody else's money.

Retainage is the other one. Ten percent held on a $600,000 GC contract is $60,000 sitting out there for months after the punch list. It belongs in its own account so you can chase it. Buried in AR, it just makes your receivables look healthy while your checking account says otherwise.

Texas-specific items to raise before you hire anyone

Ask about the franchise tax report and whether the candidate has filed them for construction entities. Ask how they handle multi-city work and equipment that moves between counties. Ask whether they've ever built a WIP schedule a bonding agent accepted.

And be clear on the attest line: if a surety or a bank demands a reviewed or audited financial statement, that's licensed attest work and a separate engagement with a CPA firm. Bookkeeping, job costing, WIP and tax prep are not attest work. Know which one you're actually being asked for before you shop.

The 1099 change that hits subcontractor-heavy shops

If you pay subs, this one matters. For tax years beginning after 2025, the Form 1099-NEC nonemployee compensation reporting threshold is $2,000. Pay a framing sub $2,400 in 2026 and he gets a 1099-NEC. Pay a one-day cleanup guy $1,850 and he doesn't.

For 2026, the payee statement must be furnished and the form filed with the IRS by January 31. Paper filers transmit with Form 1096. The only way to hit that date without a two-week panic is to collect a W-9 before the sub's first check clears — not in January when he's not answering the phone.

Forms, deadlines and what your entity actually files

Your structure decides the return: Form 1065 for a partnership, Form 1120 for a C corporation, Form 1040 for the owner's individual side. Need more time on the business return? That's Form 7004. If your personal return goes on extension, the extended federal individual due date is October 15, 2026 — an extension to file, never an extension to pay.

Equipment write-offs follow the rules in Publication 946, and truck and travel substantiation follows Publication 463. Both assume you kept records during the year. That's the whole point of a monthly close.

Stream handles construction bookkeeping, job costing, WIP tracking and tax preparation for trade contractors across Texas. Every return is reviewed and approved by an in-house CPA before filing. Stream Construction Accounting is not a CPA firm and does not provide attest services.

What it costs

Pricing depends on job volume, number of entities and how far behind the books are — a shop running 12 jobs a year is not the same engagement as one running 90.

Tell us your trade, your revenue and how many open jobs you carry, and submit a pricing request. You'll get a real number for the work, not a range.