Bookkeeping for Trades & Contractors in New Jersey

Running a trades business means juggling jobs, labor, materials, and overhead—often all at the same time.

At On The Money Bookkeeping, we provide bookkeeping for trades and contractors who want more than just reconciled bank accounts. We help you understand job profitability, labor recovery, and pricing, so you can make informed decisions instead of relying on gut feel.

Let’s Talk About Your Books

Why Trades Businesses Struggle With Their Books

Many trades businesses appear profitable on paper—until the year-end numbers tell a different story.

Common issues we see include:

Jobs that look profitable but consistently drain cash
Labor hours that don’t line up with what was billed
Materials and subcontractors quietly eroding margins
Overhead not being assigned anywhere
Pricing based on estimates rather than historical data
In many cases, this starts with a bookkeeping cleanup to correct historical errors before moving forward.

Clean books alone don’t solve these problems. Understanding how the numbers are created does.

Learn More About Our Services

Trades-Focused Bookkeeping
(What Makes This Different)

Trades bookkeeping isn’t generic. It needs to reflect how work is actually performed.

Learn more about our bookkeeping services for trades businesses and how they reflect how work is actually performed.

Our trades-focused support includes:

Monthly bookkeeping with job-level visibility
Job and project cost tracking
Labor cost and recovery analysis
Overhead allocation by job, crew, or service type
Financials that reflect operational reality—not just totals

This approach helps identify which jobs, services, or pricing structures are actually working.

New Jersey Trades Bookkeeping Experience

We work with New Jersey–based trades and contractors who operate in a regulated, high-cost environment.

From sales tax considerations to labor-heavy operations and seasonal cash flow, NJ businesses face challenges that generic bookkeeping doesn’t account for.

Our approach reflects how trades businesses actually operate in New Jersey—not a national template.

Job Costing That Supports Better Pricing

Knowing whether a job was profitable after it’s finished isn’t enough.

We help trades businesses:

Track labor burden and true labor costs
Compare billable vs. paid hours
Identify unprofitable job types or service lines
Understand which work to price differently—or stop offering

Not every job needs to be a winner—but you should always know which ones aren’t.

From DIY Books to Decision-Ready Financials

Many of our trades clients start out managing their own books or working from spreadsheets.

We help transition those DIY systems into:

Accurate, consistent bookkeeping
Job-level insight
Reporting that supports pricing, staffing, and growth decisions

Whether you’re a solo operator or managing crews, the goal is the same: numbers you can trust.

Trades We Commonly Support

Our clients include a range of skilled trades and service-based contractors, such as:

Plumbers
Electricians
Landscapers
Fence installers
Specialty trade businesses

If your business relies on labor, materials, and job-based work, this approach applies.

Let’s Talk About

Your Numbers

If you’re ready to move beyond basic bookkeeping and start understanding where your profits really come from, let’s talk.

Schedule a consultation to see if trades-focused bookkeeping is the right fit for your business.

Let’s Talk About Your Numbers