For electricians & electrical contractors
Which service calls actually paid for the truck roll?
The short answer
Most electrical shops know revenue per tech — but not profit per job type. Job costing separates service calls from install work, checks your flat-rate book against actual hours, and prices in your true labor burden — so you know which work to chase and which to reprice. We run it for a fixed monthly fee starting as low as $600, books closed by the 15th.
Founder, Accelerate Business Solutions · Published August 21, 2026 · Last updated August 21, 2026
Sound familiar?
The work is steady. The numbers are the mystery.
A flat-rate book built on gut feel
Your price book was built from what felt right years ago. Nobody's checked it against actual hours and material costs since — and labor doesn't get cheaper.
The supply-house black hole
Parts runs happen mid-job, receipts live in the truck console, and everything lands in one big materials bucket. Per-job material cost? A guess.
Busy techs, thin margins
The billed rate looks healthy until you add burden, downtime between calls, and the truck. The gap between billed and loaded cost is where profit disappears.
Service subsidizing install — or the reverse
Quick service calls and multi-day installs run through the same accounts. One side of the shop may be carrying the other, and you can't see which.
Warranty callbacks that vanish
The free return trip to fix a callback never shows up as a cost anywhere. It just quietly eats the margin on the original job.
Fleet costs spread thin
Fuel, insurance, payments, and repairs sit in overhead instead of being priced into the job — so every job looks more profitable than it is.
Trusted by business owners who run on real numbers
What you get every month
Bookkeeping wired for how electrical shops run.
A generalist bookkeeper categorizes what hits the bank. We run your books the way an electrical contractor needs them run — service and install separated, every cost tied to a job, every month closed on schedule.
Per-job profit & loss
Service calls, installs, and panel upgrades each carry their own P&L. You see which job types make money — and which ones quietly don't.
True labor burden per tech
Wages, taxes, benefits, truck time, and downtime rolled into a real hourly cost — so your billed rate is checked against reality.
Flat-rate validation
Actual hours and materials compared against your price book, task by task. Reprice what's under water before it compounds.
Materials & markup tracking
Supply-house runs coded to the job they belong to, so your markup strategy shows up in the numbers instead of evaporating.
Books closed by the 15th
Every transaction categorized, every account reconciled, reports in your hands on a set date — every single month.
A/R, A/P, 1099s & sales tax
Who owes you, who you owe, subcontractor 1099s, and filings handled — no January archaeology project.
Signs your shop needs job costing
- You can't say which is more profitable: service calls or installs
- Your flat-rate book hasn't been checked against actual hours in years
- Materials purchases all live in one expense account
- A slammed month ended with less cash than it started
- Warranty callbacks never show up as a cost anywhere
Who this fits
- Residential and commercial electrical shops
- Owner-led crews running service and install work
- Shops with 1–10 techs, roughly $250k–$5M in revenue
- Anyone pricing from a flat-rate book built on feel
- Electricians tired of Sunday-night bookkeeping
Fixed monthly pricing starting as low as $600, based on transaction volume and active jobs. You'll get an exact number on the first call — not a range that grows later.
Questions electricians actually ask
We price flat-rate from a price book. Do we still need job costing?
Especially then. A flat-rate book is only as good as the labor assumptions inside it. Job costing checks your actual hours and material costs against those assumptions, so you find out which flat-rate tasks are priced right and which ones quietly lose money on every call.
Can you track service calls separately from install work?
Yes — that's one of the first things we set up. Service, install, and warranty work each get tracked as their own job type in QuickBooks, so you can finally see which side of the shop carries the profit.
My books are months behind. Can you catch me up?
Yes. Catch-up and cleanup is routine work here, quoted as a one-time fixed project after we look at one month of your books — not an hourly meter. Then monthly service keeps you current from there.
What does it cost?
Fixed monthly pricing starting as low as $600, depending on transaction volume and how many active jobs we're tracking. No hourly billing. One flat-rate task repriced from real numbers usually covers months of the fee.
Keep reading:
- Construction bookkeeping services — job costing, WIP schedules, and retainage for GCs and home builders.
- Bookkeeping & job costing for contractors — the full picture for the trades, all in one place.
- Job costing in QuickBooks: a contractor's guide — the five-step setup that shows which jobs actually make money.
- How much does bookkeeping cost in 2026? — DIY vs. full-time hire vs. fractional, with real numbers.
Client results
What owners say after the books are handled
Shannon got our books cleaned up and finally showed us which jobs were actually making money. We stopped guessing on bids and our margins went up because of it.
Having Shannon handle the bookkeeping took a huge weight off. Everything is closed on time, the numbers make sense, and I get my evenings back instead of fighting QuickBooks.
Find out which jobs are really paying you.
Free 30-minute consult. Bring your roughest month — we'll tell you honestly what it would take to get job-level clarity, and what it costs.
Book your free consult