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Electrical contractors
Bookkeeping for electrical contractors running service and project work together.
Two different businesses often share one ledger. Service calls and project work behave differently, and reporting has to keep them apart to be useful.
What goes wrong
Where electrical books usually break.
Service revenue and project revenue land in the same accounts, so the ledger cannot tell you which side of the business is carrying the other.
Material is bought on a supply house account for whichever job needs it, then coded by whoever reconciles the statement, so material cost never lands where the work happened.
Truck stock is treated as expense at purchase, so job cost is understated on the jobs that consume it and overstated in the month it was bought.
Permit fees, inspection costs, and rework are absorbed into overhead rather than assigned to the job that caused them.
Technician time is captured for payroll but not against jobs, so labor productivity is invisible.
Larger project work brings retainage and progress billing into a book that was set up for service calls.
Industry evidence
A large, fragmented industry with real labor cost pressure.
4.8
average employees per electrical firm across about 251,789 firms, at roughly 7.5% average profit margin
$62,350
median pay for an electrician, across 818,700 jobs and 9% projected growth
21%
target ceiling for service labor as a share of revenue, with parts at 15% or less and callbacks at 1% or less
What our team handles
What the engagement covers.
01
Service and project split
Separate revenue and cost structures so each side of the business reports its own margin, and shared overhead is allocated on a stated basis.
02
Supply house discipline
Vendor statements reconciled and material coded to the job, with a documented process for the field to attribute purchases.
03
Truck stock handled properly
Consumables and stock treated consistently so job cost reflects what was used, not what was bought that month.
04
Loaded labor cost
Wages plus taxes, workers compensation, and benefits assigned to jobs, so a service call carries its real cost.
05
Job cost on project work
Retainage, progress billing, and change orders tracked in the ledger for the project side.
06
Measures that matter
Average ticket, billable efficiency, callback rate, and margin by work type reported the same way every month.
Service work and project work are two businesses. One ledger should still report them separately.
Service is high frequency, fast paying, and margin rich. Project work is slower, larger, and holds cash back. Blended into one line, they cancel each other out and the report tells you nothing.
What you should be able to see
What you should be able to answer.
- Margin on service work against margin on project work
- Average ticket and revenue per technician per day
- Material cost as a share of revenue, by work type
- Callback and rework cost, assigned rather than absorbed
- Loaded labor cost per billable hour
- Retainage outstanding on the project side
- Which customers and contract types are actually worth repeating
Questions
What owners in this trade ask.
Can you separate service and project reporting in our existing file?
Usually yes, without changing software. It is a chart of accounts and classification exercise, and it is one of the first things our team fixes.
How do you handle material bought for one job and used on another?
With a documented attribution process the field can actually follow, then reconciliation against the supply house statement. Perfection is not the goal, consistency is.
Do you cost truck stock to jobs?
We set a consistent treatment appropriate to your volume and document it. The important part is that it does not swing job margin month to month.
We do a lot of prevailing wage work. Can you support it?
We reconcile payroll and coordinate with your payroll provider on the reporting. The filing stays with them.
Related industries
Nearby work our team knows well.
Next step
Find out which side of the business is really paying.
Take the assessment for an immediate score and a short list of priorities, or book a call and talk it through with our team. No contact details needed to see your score.
Free. About 6 minutes. 25 questions. No contact details required.