Job Costing That Revealed the Real Margins

The challenge

Coastal Build Group had grown to $9M in annual revenue across residential remodels and light commercial work, but their books tracked costs by vendor rather than by job. The owners believed margins sat around 22%. Their bonding company was asking for a work-in-progress schedule they couldn't produce, and eighteen months of transactions had never been reconciled.

What we did

We reconstructed eighteen months of books from bank statements and Buildertrend exports, then designed a job-costing chart of accounts with labor, materials, subcontractor, and equipment categories for every project. Progress billing and retainage were tied back to contracts, and we introduced percentage-of-completion accounting so revenue matched work performed rather than invoices sent.

The outcome

The rebuilt books showed the real gross margin was closer to 14%, with two project types running at a loss. Coastal repriced those services, added change-order tracking, and now receives a WIP schedule monthly. Their bonding capacity increased by $2M within a year.

“We thought we knew our numbers. Alic showed us which jobs were paying the bills and which ones were quietly costing us money.”Marisol Delgado, Owner, Coastal Build Group