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 September 19, 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
How to do bookkeeping for an electrical contractor
Electrical bookkeeping follows the same six steps whether you run two trucks or twenty. Most shops get the first two right and lose the value at step three.
1. Split direct job costs from overhead
Labor, parts, subcontractors, fuel, and equipment sit as direct job costs — separate from insurance, office costs, and your own salary draw. Without this split, per-job margin is fiction.
2. Set up job types: service, install, warranty
In QuickBooks Online, every job carries a type. That one field is what lets you compare a month of service calls against a month of panel upgrades — instead of one blended revenue number.
3. Code every truck roll to the job that consumed it
Supply-house runs, permits, mileage, and dump fees get tagged to the job. This is the discipline step — most electrical books fail here, and nothing downstream works without it.
4. Price tech hours at true burden, not base wage
A tech paid $28 an hour costs the shop $40–$50 once taxes, benefits, truck, and idle windshield time are counted. Your billed rate has to clear the loaded number, not the wage.
5. Validate the flat-rate book against actuals
Each month, compare the tasks you billed against the hours and parts actually consumed. Tasks that run over become repricing candidates before the loss compounds across the year.
6. Close the month with a per-job-type P&L
Service, install, and warranty each get their own profit line, plus a warranty-cost total. That report is what tells you which work to chase — and which price book rows to fix.
The bookkeeping mistakes that cost electrical shops the most
- Flat-rate book never checked against actual hours and material costs
- All supply-house purchases in one materials bucket, no per-job coding
- Warranty callbacks scheduled but never costed — margins flattered
- Truck payments, fuel, and insurance sitting in overhead
- Service and install margins blended into one number
Should you outsource your electrical bookkeeping?
A full-time in-house bookkeeper runs roughly $55,000–$75,000 a year once benefits and payroll taxes are counted, and most shops under $5M in revenue don't have forty hours a week of bookkeeping work to hand them. Outsourced bookkeeping gives you service-vs-install reporting at a fixed monthly fee, from someone who already knows cost codes, labor burden, and flat-rate validation. Keep it in-house when daily transaction volume is high and your people already code jobs cleanly.
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.
How do you do bookkeeping for an electrical contractor?
Six steps, in order: (1) split direct job costs — labor, parts, subcontractors, fuel — from overhead like insurance and office costs; (2) set up job types in QuickBooks Online for service, install, and warranty work; (3) code every transaction to the job that consumed it, including truck time and supply-house runs; (4) price tech hours at true burden — wages, taxes, benefits, and truck cost — not base wage; (5) reconcile the bank, credit cards, and supply-house accounts every month; (6) close the month with a per-job-type P&L and a flat-rate variance review. Step 3 is where most electrical books break down.
What does a bookkeeper do for an electrical contractor?
An electrical bookkeeper codes every part and labor hour to the job it belonged to, separates service from install from warranty, tracks true labor burden per tech, validates the flat-rate price book against actual hours, handles A/R and A/P, files subcontractor 1099s, and closes the month with a per-job-type P&L. A generalist bookkeeper does only the reconciling — which is why the job-level numbers stay invisible.
What are the biggest bookkeeping mistakes electrical contractors make?
Five recur constantly: never validating the flat-rate book against actual hours; dumping all supply-house purchases into one materials account; treating warranty callbacks as free when their labor cost is real; leaving truck and fleet costs in overhead instead of pricing them into jobs; and blending service and install margins so neither can be judged.
Should I outsource my electrical shop's bookkeeping?
Outsource when the job-level numbers matter more than the hours cost. A full-time in-house bookkeeper runs roughly $55,000–$75,000 a year with benefits and payroll taxes, and most shops under $5M don't have 40 hours a week of bookkeeping work. An outsourced specialist gives you service-vs-install reporting at a fixed monthly fee, with job costing experience you'd otherwise have to train for. Keep it in-house if daily volume is high and your people already run cost codes cleanly.
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.
Shannon helped me clean up a year of QuickBooks financials and get me on the right track to be able to see clean financials after going through a few other bookkeeping companies. Finally found one that does what they say they will, and their end of month reporting analysis is better than any of the others I've used.
Find out which jobs are really paying you.
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