Construction Accounting & Bookkeeping Calgary
Construction and Trades - Accounting and Bookkeeping Calgary
Managing a successful contracting or construction business means juggling tight project timelines, fluctuating material costs, and complex labour management.
Your business is all about managing crews and bidding on new contracts. The last thing you should worry about is falling behind on your books, chasing missing receipts, or navigating CRA regulations.
Radiant Skies Advisory & Accounting provides paperless bookkeeping, cloud accounting, and Fractional CFO services.
We serve owner-managed construction firms, general contractors, and trades across Calgary, Cochrane, Chestermere, Okotoks, and Airdrie.
We translate your job-site operations into clear, tax-optimized financial statements. That takes the tedious administrative burden off your plate.
Start with a free, no-obligation discussion:
Fixed monthly fee, confirmed upfront. No hourly billing.
Book My Free Discussion
Construction Accounting & Bookkeeping Calgary, Cochrane, Chestermere, Okotoks, and Airdrie
Tailored Bookkeeping, Accounting, and CFO Strategies for Each Trade
Radiant Skies bridges the gap between your job sites and your financial statements. We know how a pour, a shutdown, or an insurance claim lands on your balance sheet, your corporate tax return, and your cash runway. Here is how we handle the financial blueprint of each trade.
General Contracting and Heavy Structural
General Contracting and Remodeling
A general contractor fronts the subs, the materials, and the crew, then chases the owner's progress draw. Your holdbacks wait in their own balance sheet account, so you see what each customer still holds against you. Each contract reports its margin after subcontractors, materials, and labour, one project per contract. Change orders take their own line on each project, so the extra work stands beside the base contract before the job closes. That line protects your gross margin.
Construction and Framing
A framing crew burns through lumber packages faster than the finishing trades behind it. Your high-volume lumber and material bills post against the projects that framed with them, so each month you read your material cost variance. Your tax return claims the CCA on the forklift, the telehandler, and the trucks.
Concrete and Paving
A pump truck, a paver, and a roller each come with a loan and a season. We keep the capital asset schedule and the loan accounts for your mixers, pavers, and heavy equipment. Each pour and each paving contract carries its own costs, so each one reveals its own margin. Our Fractional CFO cash forecast tells you whether the summer's revenue covers the winter's loan payments and wages.
Demolition Contractor and Excavation
An excavator bills by the hour, a haul truck by the load, and the landfill by the tonne. Equipment hours, labour, and disposal fees land on the contract that used them. Disposal gets its own line on each contract, so the tipping fees you paid sit ready to invoice back to the client. Your excavators, loaders, and haul trucks run through the capital asset schedule with their loans beside them.
Mechanical and Systems Contracting
Electrical Contracting
Wire, breakers, and panels move from the wholesaler to your van to the job, and the cost moves with them. We track your wholesale parts through the QuickBooks® Online inventory, so stock on the shelf shows as inventory on the balance sheet, not as an expense already spent. Each job draws its parts from that stock, so the job's margin counts the parts it used.
HVAC and Plumbing
A furnace install and a no-heat call pay at different rates and cost different hours. Installation work and service work each deliver their own margin on their own lines. Our Fractional CFO cash forecast indicates how peak-season revenue carries slow-season payroll and van costs. We maintain the capital asset schedule and loan accounts for your equipment and vans, so your CCA claim reaches its full value.
Mechanical Contracting
Piping, sheet metal, and controls each own their cost lines on a contract, so each states its margin. Progress billings and holdbacks on each contract rest in their own accounts. Our Accounting Services prepare monthly statements that tell you which contracts and which trades netted the margin.
Book My Free Discussion
Finishing Trades and Interior Specialties
Carpentry and Drywall
Labour and board attach to the job that hung them, so each job records its own margin. We handle your payroll and your subcontractor payments. Employees and subcontractors each sort onto the right side of the T4 and T5018 line. Your statements flag the general contractors who pay late.
Painting
Residential repaints and commercial contracts live on separate cost lines, so each presents its own margin. We cover payroll for seasonal crews and T5018 reporting for subcontract painters. Our Fractional CFO cash forecast maps how deposits and final payments bridge the winter.
Flooring and Tiling
Each installation books its own material and labour, so its margin appears on its own line. Material bought for stock stays on the balance sheet until a job pulls it. Your tile saw, trailer, and van go on the capital asset schedule with their loans.
Exterior and Property Services
Roofing
An insurance roof settles in two parts: the insurer's cheque and the homeowner's deductible. We separate those two amounts on each job, so you know which part is still open. Materials, crew, and subcontractors charge to each roof, so each roof yields its own margin. Your peak-season revenue funds your off-season costs, and our Fractional CFO cash forecast puts a number on it.
Fence Services
Residential and commercial jobs each bear their own costs, so each returns its own margin. We park your customer deposits as a liability until the job finishes, so your income statement contains revenue you have finished. We look after crew payroll and subcontractor T5018 reporting.
Restoration
A restoration claim splits into three balances: the insurer's payments, the insurer's holdback, and the homeowner's deductible. We track each claim as its own project, so each balance sits open until the insurer closes the file. Emergency work and rebuild work occupy separate cost lines under each claim, so each produces its own margin. Our Fractional CFO cash forecast warns you before open-claim costs outrun your cash.
Book My Free Discussion
Metal Trades and Fabrication
Welding
A rig welder's truck and machines arrive with loans that we carry on your balance sheet. Each site job clears its margin after consumables and rig hours. Subcontract rig welders and employee welders each line up on the right side of your T4 and T5018 reporting. Your CCA claim takes its full value at year-end.
Millwrights
Travel, per diems, and tooling follow the crew to the shutdown or the installation that called for them. Each contract then realizes its margin after overtime and shift premiums. Progress billings on long installations accumulate in their own account, so you know what each plant still holds back. Payroll for field crews assigns each wage to the job that called it out.
Small Fabrication Shops
Steel and plate remain on your balance sheet until a job cuts them. Each job then pulls in its margin after steel, consumables, and shop hours. A customer deposit holds as a liability until the work leaves the shop, so the sale falls in the month you shipped. Your brake, plasma table, and shop equipment join the capital asset schedule with their loans.
Five Services, Built Around Your Jobs
Bookkeeping: the monthly close by job
Each monthly close lines up each job's materials, crew wages, subcontractor bills, and holdbacks on their own lines. We file your GST return and your WCB-Alberta reports from those same books.
Accounting: margin by job and by trade
Our monthly statements tell you which jobs earned their margin after labour, materials, and subcontractors, and what the company kept.
Corporate tax: the return with your equipment on it
We prepare and file the corporate return and claim the CCA on your trucks and equipment in full. We file your T5018 slips, and we set your salary and dividend mix before year-end.
Payroll: field crews paid by the job
Each pay period, each wage goes to the job that used it. We remit your source deductions to the CRA on their due dates.
Fractional CFO: the next crew tested before you commit
We forecast your cash from deposit to holdback release on each contract. We test the next crew, the new excavator, or the large bid before you commit.
Book My Free DiscussionThe Core Financial Challenges We Solve for Alberta Contractors
Inaccurate Job Costing - Are you making money?
Many contractors know their bank balance but not which jobs drive profit and which drain it. A year that felt busy can end with a thin margin, and the office cannot say which job caused it. Our Bookkeeping Services set up job costing with one project for each contract. You then see labour, materials, and subcontractors line by line for each job, and our Accounting Services report the margin each job kept.
Trapped Holdbacks and Late Progress Payments - Is your cash stuck in someone else's account?
Project owners and general contractors hold back part of each progress payment until the project reaches substantial performance. Progress billing then spreads the rest of your revenue across milestones. Our Bookkeeping Services track holdback accounts on your balance sheet, receivable from your customers and payable to your subcontractors. Each open invoice then shows who owes you and for how long, and our Fractional CFO forecast carries the holdback release into your cash plan.
Missed T5018 Slips and WCB Gaps - Will a missed filing cost you a penalty?
A construction business reports its subcontractor payments to the CRA on the T5018 slip. The CRA uses those slips to check the subcontractors' own reporting. Our Tax Services file your T5018 slips, and our Bookkeeping Services keep your WCB-Alberta reporting current. We check each worker's status, because a subcontractor who works like an employee creates retroactive source deduction liability.
Late GST and Payroll Crunches - Can you cover Friday's cheques and the GST remittance?
You collect GST on each invoice and claim input tax credits on each material purchase. The difference goes to the CRA on a set date, whether or not your customers have paid you. Crew payroll falls due each payday on the same cash. A busy month can leave you with both bills and an empty account. Radiant Skies Bookkeeping Services file your GST return each period and claim your credits on it. Our Payroll Services run the crew through QuickBooks® Online Payroll and send source deductions to the CRA on time. Our Fractional CFO cash forecast shows your cash before payroll and the GST remittance land together.
Construction Technology for Owners Who Work from the Truck
You run your business from job sites, not from a desk, and your bookkeeping does not need one either.
Hub - QuickBooks® Online
Your monthly close runs on QuickBooks® Online alone. Every job cost, invoice, holdback, and payroll entry lives there, and your books stay complete with no other app.
Optional Spokes
Three apps plug into the hub when your jobs call for them:
Dext® for Site Receipts and Bills
Your crew photographs the receipt at the lumber yard, the equipment rental counter, or the fuel pump. Dext® sends it to QuickBooks® Online with the job name on it. Each job carries its own materials, rentals, and fuel. Paper receipts stop piling up in the truck.
Plooto® for Payments In and Out
You approve subcontractor invoices and supplier bills from your phone, and Plooto® pays them on terms. Plooto® also collects pre-authorized debits from your customers on the dates you agree. Each payment, in or out, posts to QuickBooks® Online. Each subcontractor payment sits in that subcontractor's file, ready for the T5018.
Jobber® for Quotes and Job Billing
Jobber® links to QuickBooks® Online, and we help you set up that link. Your quotes, change orders, progress invoices, and deposits then flow into your books without re-entry. The holdback on each progress invoice lands in its own account.
Book My Free DiscussionA Fixed Monthly Fee, Scoped Like a Bid
We bid lump sum.
We walk your books the way you walk a site before a tender: crew size, trades on payroll, subcontractors paid, supplier accounts open, jobs running at once.
From that walk-through we set one lump-sum monthly fee and send it to you in writing before the first month starts.
The fee holds through the year, busy season and shutdown alike, and no progress draw on it ever arrives mid-month.
A new trade on payroll, a second crew, or a run of large contracts is a change in scope.
We price that change in writing before we take it on.
GST applies on the fee, as it does on your own invoices.
Contact Us
Ready to build a more profitable trade business?
Your general contractors pay on their schedule, your supplier wants payment now, and your crew expects Friday's cheque.
Your books should show you how to cover all three.
The contractors who know their margin on each job bid with confidence and borrow on better terms.
Book a free discussion and bring your questions about holdbacks, subcontractors, and year-end tax.
Waheed Khan, CPA, CFA, MBA, answers them in person and keeps your file himself.
Start with a free, no-obligation discussion:
We serve owner-managed small and medium-sized businesses throughout Calgary and the surrounding areas, including Cochrane, Chestermere, Okotoks, and Airdrie.
Scope, Regulatory & Legal Disclaimers
General Information Disclaimer: The financial, compliance, and tax information provided on this page is designed strictly for general educational purposes. It does not constitute, and must not be used as a substitute for, personalized professional accounting, legal, or tax advice tailored to your specific corporate structure or personal financial situation.
Scope Note: Radiant Skies Advisory & Accounting is a professional CPA practice registered with CPA Alberta, providing accounting, tax, and advisory services — not assurance.
Software Subscriptions & Professional Fees: Our fee covers the accounting, compliance, and tax work we do. You pay your QuickBooks® Online, Dext®, Jobber®, and Plooto® subscriptions to those providers directly; our fee does not include them.
Trademark Note: QuickBooks® Online is a registered trademark of Intuit Inc. Dext® is a registered trademark of Dext Software Ltd. Jobber® is a registered trademark of Octopusapp Inc. Plooto® is a registered trademark of Plooto Inc. Radiant Skies Advisory & Accounting is an independent professional services practice. These companies do not endorse, sponsor, or affiliate with us.