Bookkeeping for Businesses That Run on Trucks, Tickets, and Routes
Plumbing, HVAC, Roofing, Glass, Framing, Pest Control, Pool Service, Controls, Handyman, and Rental Repair - across Texas.
A Thousand Small Transactions Is Harder Than One Big One.
A contractor running four large jobs has four things to track. A plumbing company running six trucks has four hundred — every ticket, every parts run, every card swipe at the supply house, every tech who bought something on a personal card and mentioned it eight days later.
Volume is what breaks trades bookkeeping. Not complexity. The individual transactions are simple; there are just too many of them for anyone to keep up with part-time, and by the time the month closes nobody can say which trucks, which service lines, or which techs actually made money.
We handle high-volume field businesses — coding weekly so it never piles up, reconciling your field software to the books so both agree, and reporting at the level you actually manage: per truck, per tech, per service line.
- Hundreds of small transactions a month, uncategorized
- Receipts in trucks, glove boxes, and text messages
- Field software and the books showing different numbers
- No idea what revenue per technician actually is
- Service and install profit blended into one number
- Material costs never tied back to the job or ticket
- Truck stock and inventory unaccounted for
- Callbacks and warranty work absorbed invisibly
Three Different Economic Models, One Word for All of Them
"Trades" covers businesses that make money in completely different ways. The numbers that matter — and the way the books have to be built — change with the model. If you're running larger contract work, our construction page covers WIP, AIA billing, and bonding.
Recurring Service
Pool service · Pest control · Maintenance agreementsYou're closer to a subscription business than a contractor. Revenue is predictable, margin lives in route efficiency, and the number that decides your year is how many accounts you keep.
What We Track- Recurring revenue and month-over-month account count
- Attrition — accounts lost, and what they were worth
- Revenue and cost per stop, per route, per tech
- Chemical, material, and fuel cost as a share of revenue
- Route density, because windshield time is pure cost
Demand & Dispatch
Plumbing · HVAC · Glass · Handyman · RepairRevenue comes one call at a time and the business lives on ticket volume and technician productivity. Two techs doing identical hours can produce very different money.
What We Track- Revenue per technician and per truck
- Average ticket, and how it moves over time
- Service margin versus install or replacement margin
- Truck stock, parts usage, and inventory shrink
- Callback and warranty cost, made visible instead of absorbed
Project Trades
Roofing · Framing · Controls & automation · RemodelYou bid work, run it over days or weeks, and bill in stages. Economically you're a contractor, so the discipline is construction discipline — job costing, progress billing, and retainage.
What We Track- Job costing by labor, material, and sub
- Estimated versus actual on every completed job
- Progress billing, draws, and retainage where it applies
- Change orders that got worked but never billed
- Crew-level productivity across concurrent jobs
Built for Volume, Not for a Quiet Office
The work that has to happen every week for a field business to stay current.
High-Volume Transaction Processing
Hundreds of transactions a month, coded weekly so nothing accumulates into a month-end pile.
- Card, ACH, and cash activity coded weekly
- Supply house accounts reconciled to statements
- Fuel and fleet card activity allocated by truck
- Duplicate and personal charges caught early
Receipt Capture That Actually Works
Techs in the field don't file paperwork. The system has to survive that, not depend on it changing.
- Mobile capture your crews will actually use
- Missing-receipt follow-up we chase, not you
- Card charges matched to jobs and tickets
- Documentation retained where it's findable later
Service and Install, Separated
Blending a $280 service call with a $9,000 install hides which side of your business is carrying the other.
- Revenue split by service line and job type
- Margin by line, not just company-wide gross profit
- Maintenance agreement revenue tracked separately
- Deposits and progress payments handled properly
Materials, Parts & Truck Stock
Material is usually your largest controllable cost and the easiest one to lose track of.
- Material allocated to the ticket or job, not a bucket
- Truck stock tracked so shrink is visible
- Supplier pricing and rebate activity reconciled
- Warranty parts and returns credited back correctly
Getting Paid
Field businesses invoice constantly and chase constantly. That's exactly the work that gets skipped.
- Invoicing off completed tickets, same week
- Payment application and deposit reconciliation
- Collections calls on aging accounts
- Property managers and builders chased on their terms
Monthly Close & Year-End
A real close, not "the books are updated" — plus a year-end package your CPA can work from.
- Every account reconciled at month-end
- Balance sheet reviewed, not just the P&L
- Sub and 1099 records complete before January
- Statements delivered days after close, not weeks
Volume is the whole problem, which is why we code weekly rather than monthly. On a field business, a month of uncategorized activity takes longer to untangle than four weeks of keeping up would have.
Hourly Crews, Overtime, and Pay That Isn't Just a Wage
Field payroll has more moving parts than office payroll, and the mistakes are expensive. We process roughly 8,000 payrolls a year.
Hourly, Overtime & Drive Time
Overtime calculated correctly across a real week, including how drive time and on-call hours are treated in your operation.
Commission, Spiffs & Bonuses
Technician commissions, sales spiffs, and performance bonuses processed and reported — and factored into true labor cost per tech.
Per Diem & Reimbursements
Travel, per diem, tool allowances, and phone reimbursements handled so they're treated correctly rather than run through as wages.
Labor Cost by Job or Route
Payroll allocated to jobs, tickets, or routes, so labor shows up in the numbers where it was actually spent.
Certified Payroll When Needed
Trades that pick up public or commercial work get pulled into prevailing wage reporting. WH-347, LCPtracker, CCIP — we already do it.
Onboarding & Turnover
New hire paperwork, I-9 and W-4 handling, and the documentation churn that comes with a workforce that turns over.
Your Field Software and Your Books Should Agree
Most trades businesses run scheduling and invoicing in a field app and the books somewhere else. When nobody reconciles the two, both become unreliable.
QuickBooks Online — ProAdvisor Elite
Our team holds Intuit's top ProAdvisor tier. The books live here, configured for how a field business actually operates.
- Chart of accounts built for service and install lines
- Class or location tracking by truck, crew, or branch
- Items set up so material lands in cost of sales properly
- Reporting layered on top for per-tech and per-line margin
Whatever You Dispatch In
We don't require you to change field software. We work with what you already use — including Service Pro, which several of our recurring-service clients run — and make sure it ties to the books.
- Service Pro integrated with QuickBooks Online, so routes, stops, and invoices reach the ledger without hand entry
- Field and dispatch platforms reconciled to the general ledger
- Invoices and payments matched between systems
- Sync errors and duplicates found before they compound
- Gaps flagged when a platform's export doesn't tell the truth
- For project trades, Knowify where job costing needs more depth
The Certificate You Never Collected Is the One That Costs You.
Workers' compensation and general liability premiums get audited against your real payroll and subcontractor spend. If a sub can't be documented as carrying their own coverage for the period they worked, those payments can land in your premium basis as though they were your employees.
It's rarely a coverage problem. It's a paperwork problem — a certificate nobody collected, or one that expired mid-job. We track them as the work happens, keep payroll tied to what was filed, and handle the audits ourselves. We've done that every year since 2021.
The Numbers You'd Actually Run the Business On
A standard profit and loss statement doesn't tell a field business anything useful. These do.
If You're Recurring Service
- Monthly recurring revenue and account count
- Attrition rate and revenue lost to churn
- Revenue per stop and per route
- Chemical and material cost as % of revenue
- Cost to acquire an account versus its lifetime value
- Route profitability, not just company profit
If You're Demand & Dispatch
- Revenue per technician and per truck
- Average ticket by service line
- Billable versus paid hours
- Service margin versus install margin
- Callback and warranty cost as % of revenue
- Material cost per ticket
If You're Project Trades
- Gross margin by job and job type
- Estimated versus actual cost on closed jobs
- Labor hours per unit or per square
- Unbilled change orders and aging work
- Backlog and remaining contract value
- Retainage held, tracked separately from receivables
These get built as dashboards you can check any time rather than a report you wait for. See our reporting and advisory services →
One Team, Because Field Businesses Have Too Many Moving Parts Already
Payroll allocates to jobs. Jobs roll into margin. Invoicing drives receivables, and receivables drive whether payroll clears. Split those across three providers and the numbers stop agreeing right when you need them.
To be clear about scope: BBS provides bookkeeping, payroll, and financial operations services. We are not a CPA firm and not a law firm. Two boundaries worth naming for trades specifically: we don't handle insurance claim work for roofers — supplements, ACV and RCV negotiation, deductible questions, and adjuster disputes stay with you or your claims specialist, and we record the results accurately once they're settled. And on licensing, permitting, or employment law questions, we'll tell you when something needs a licensed professional rather than guessing at it.
Trades Bookkeeping Across Texas — and Nationwide
We work with trades and field service businesses in San Antonio, Bulverde, Spring Branch, Boerne, and New Braunfels, plus Austin, Dallas–Fort Worth, and Houston. Multi-market operators are handled remotely through our secure client portal.
See All Locations We Serve →Trades & Field Service Bookkeeping — Answered
What owners of field businesses ask before handing over the books.
Which trades do you actually work with?
Our current trades clients include multiple roofing companies, multiple plumbing companies, HVAC, residential and commercial glass, framing, controls and automation, pest control, pool service, handyman services, and a company doing repair and remodel work for rental property owners. That range matters less than the model — a pool route and a roofing company are different businesses, and we build the books differently for each.
Do you handle insurance claims for roofing work?
No. Supplements, ACV and RCV, deductible handling, and adjuster negotiation stay with you or whoever handles claims for you. What we do is record the results correctly once a claim settles — so revenue, deductibles, and supplement payments land in the right places and your job margin reflects what actually happened rather than what was originally approved.
Do we have to change our dispatch software?
No. Whatever you schedule and invoice in, we work with it and reconcile it to the books — several of our recurring-service clients run Service Pro, integrated with QuickBooks Online. The common failure isn't the software — it's that nobody checks whether the field platform and the general ledger agree, so duplicates, failed syncs, and unapplied payments quietly accumulate. That reconciliation is part of what we do every month.
Can you tell us revenue per technician?
Yes, and it's usually the most revealing number a dispatch business has never seen. It requires revenue attributed to the tech who produced it and labor cost including overtime, commission, and burden — which means the payroll and the revenue side both have to be built for it. Once it exists, most owners find a spread between their best and worst techs that's much wider than they assumed.
Our techs are terrible about receipts. Is that a dealbreaker?
No, and we don't plan around them suddenly becoming diligent. We set up mobile capture that takes seconds, match card charges to jobs from statement data where a receipt never appears, and do the missing-receipt chasing ourselves instead of adding it to your list. Some slippage is normal in a field business; the goal is a system that survives it.
We do both service and installs. Can you separate them?
Yes, and you should. Service and replacement work have very different margins, and blending them hides which one is subsidizing the other. We set up revenue and cost tracking by line so you can see margin on each, which is what tells you where to put another truck or another tech.
How do you handle truck stock and inventory?
At the level that's worth the effort for your size. Full perpetual inventory is overkill for most trades businesses and nobody maintains it. What we do is track material to the ticket or job, reconcile supply house accounts, and monitor material as a percentage of revenue — so if shrink or waste is building up, it shows in the numbers even without counting every fitting.
We're a pool route, not a contractor. Does this still fit?
Yes, and the reporting looks completely different. Recurring service businesses live on account count, attrition, and route density, not job costing. We track recurring revenue, what churn is costing you, revenue and cost per stop, and route-level profitability — because a route can be busy and still lose money on drive time.
Do you handle certified payroll if we take a commercial job?
Yes. Trades businesses often pick up public or commercial work and discover prevailing wage reporting after the fact. WH-347 and agency forms, Davis-Bacon determinations by classification, fringe reporting, statements of compliance, and submission through LCPtracker or CCIP are routine for us. See our payroll and HR compliance services.
Are you a CPA firm?
No. BBS provides bookkeeping, payroll, and financial operations services — not CPA, tax, or attest services. We're not a CPA firm and we don't prepare returns. We keep the books accurate all year, assemble a year-end package your CPA can work from, and coordinate with them directly.
We're behind. How bad is that?
Normal, and it's how a lot of trades engagements start — volume is exactly what causes books to fall behind. We do a diagnostic review, give you a written scope and fixed price before starting, then get the history current before running forward. See our catch-up and cleanup service.
What does this cost?
A flat monthly price, quoted after we look at your actual transaction volume, truck and crew count, number of accounts, and whether payroll and AP/AR are in scope. Volume is the main driver on a trades engagement. We don't bill hourly and we don't meter phone calls — a client who won't call because the clock is running is a client we can't help.
One Team for the Whole Back End
Bookkeeping, payroll, AP/AR and collections, reporting, controller oversight, and office support at one flat monthly price — so the person who runs your payroll is the person who knows what it costs you per truck.
What Does Your Best Truck Make? What About Your Worst?
Most field businesses can't answer that, and the gap between the two is usually where the profit went. Start a strategy call and we'll show you what it takes to see it.
Start a Strategy Call →
