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Reporting capabilities enable you to track projects and analyze overall business finances in real time, so you can quickly identify problems and take steps to correct them before it’s too late. By managing accounts receivable and accounts payable, software can help contractors ensure they collect what they’re owed and stay on good terms with suppliers. Construction accounting software should also help to ensure accurate tax filings, with enough flexibility to support the range of revenue recognition methods used by the construction industry. QuickBooks Online has been used successfully by thousands of construction companies. While not an industry-specific construction management software, the solution can handle the needed accounting for most construction businesses. This includes managing job costs, tracking time and expenses for projects, and running various reports on a job/project level.
For project control, managers would focus particular attention on items indicating substantial deviation from budgeted amounts. To accurately estimate a job, every aspect of its labor, materials and overhead costs must be understood. Tracking labor costs is tough when you have a mobile workforce deployed on many different projects.
Construction Costs
As a result, Acme’s accountant books an adjusting journal entry to move the excess billed amount into a liability account. A second key consideration is transfer of control — the point at which ownership and control of the end product passes to the customer. In situations where the ownership and control of a contractor’s work product becomes the customer’s over time, PCM would be applied to each performance obligation rather than the total contract price.
Keys, as-builts, and other information that the owner needs to manage their new building must be handed over. 40% of construction companies are still using paper plans on the job. Luckily, there are construction management platforms that can help create a 3,000-foot view of a project and make it easier to predict and prevent poor micro practices from infringing on project success. Prepare a schedule progress report on planned versus actual expenditure on a project (similar to that in Figure 12-5) for the project described in Example 12-6.
Construction accounting:
Typically, final cost estimates are formed in terms of real dollars and an item reflecting inflation costs is added on as a percentage or lump sum. This inflation allowance would then be allocated to individual cost items in relation to the actual expected inflation over the period for which costs will be incurred. An earned value report analyzes the difference between the estimated costs and actual costs over the schedule of a project. It can show both budget and schedule savings and overruns over the life of a project.
Converting a final cost estimate into a project budget compatible with an organization’s cost accounts is not always a straightforward task. As described in Chapter 5, cost estimates are generally disaggregated into appropriate functional or resource based project categories. For example, labor and material quantities might be construction bookkeeping included for each of several physical components of a project. For cost accounting purposes, labor and material quantities are aggregated by type no matter for which physical component they are employed. For example, particular types of workers or materials might be used on numerous different physical components of a facility.