Home Builders & Remodelers
A kitchen remodel takes three months. You won't know if you made money for six. Job costing tracks every dollar by project so you can price the next one right.
The Industry
Building and remodeling homes is a long game financially. A custom home might take eight months to a year. A major kitchen remodel runs three to four months. You’re buying materials, paying subcontractors, and covering labor costs the entire time. Payment shows up in draws if you’re lucky, or at completion if you’re working with a homeowner who holds back until the punch list is done.
The complexity comes from having too many moving parts to track manually. You have lumber yards, tile suppliers, cabinet vendors, and a rotating cast of subcontractors. Material prices shift between when you bid and when you actually buy. Change orders get approved with a nod in the middle of a job site walkthrough. By the time the project wraps, reconstructing what you actually spent feels impossible.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Custom home builders, production builders, kitchen and bath remodelers, whole-house renovation specialists, and addition contractors throughout Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico. Anyone taking a project from plans to completion.
The Friction
The Friction
Material invoices pile up faster than you can file them. Subcontractor payments go out weeks before draws come in. Change orders get agreed to but never make it onto the final invoice. At project close, you’re not entirely sure what you spent versus what you billed.
What We Handle
We set up job costing so every expense ties to a specific project. Lumber for the Garcia addition goes to the Garcia addition, not to a generic materials line item. Labor hours get tracked by job. Subcontractor invoices get coded to the right project the day they arrive. You see exactly what each build or remodel costs in real time, not months after it’s finished.
We also handle the compliance work that eats into your evenings. New Mexico Gross Receipts Tax returns filed on time each month. Subcontractor W-9s collected before the first check goes out. Progress billing reconciled against actual costs so you always know where each active project stands financially.
Job-Level Financials
Job-Level Financials
Every receipt, timesheet, and sub invoice gets coded to the correct project. Monthly reports show actual costs against your original estimate, broken down by category. You know which jobs are tracking on budget and which ones are running over before it’s too late to adjust.
GRT and Compliance
GRT and Compliance
We prepare and file your Gross Receipts Tax returns each month so you stay current with the state. We track which vendors need 1099s and make sure the paperwork is ready well before January. No year-end scramble chasing down W-9s.
Common Problems
The most dangerous pattern is using deposits from new projects to finish old ones. It works as long as new work keeps coming in. Without clear tracking of costs versus billings on each job, you won’t see the problem until the bank account is low and you still owe your framing crew for last month.
Change orders are the other profit killer. The homeowner asks for a different countertop material mid-project. You agree, order it, install it. Somehow it never gets added to the final invoice because the conversation happened in a half-finished kitchen, not in writing. You eat the cost difference and don’t realize it for months.
Bidding Blind
Bidding Blind
If you don’t know what your last three similar projects actually cost, your next bid is educated guesswork. Underbid and you lose money. Overbid and you lose the job to someone else. Most builders are guessing because the data from past jobs was never organized properly.
The Draw Timing Gap
The Draw Timing Gap
You front materials and labor for weeks before a draw comes through. Three projects hitting their material-heavy phases at the same time can create a cash crunch even when all three are profitable on paper. You need visibility into what’s coming and when.
What Changes
You start pricing from data instead of instinct. You look at the actual cost breakdown from your last few bathroom remodels and know exactly where your estimate was accurate and where you consistently undershot. Change orders get documented and billed because there’s a system reminding you to do it.
Cash flow becomes something you can plan around. You see the draw schedules across all active projects and time your material purchases accordingly. When you need financing for equipment or want to take on a larger project, the bank sees clean financial statements that back up your request instead of a mess of receipts and estimates.
Confident Bidding
Confident Bidding
Historical job cost data shows what similar projects actually cost, including the overruns and surprises that always seem to happen. You stop underbidding work and eating the difference. You take on jobs knowing the margin you’re actually going to make.
Bank Ready
Bank Ready
Lenders want organized financials before they approve construction loans or equipment financing. When you walk in with project-level profitability reports and clean books, the conversation moves faster. Your numbers tell the story instead of you trying to explain a shoebox of receipts.
Santa Fe's Small Business Bookkeeper
The Next Step:
A Quick Conversation
Tell us about your business and what you're dealing with. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a straightforward quote.
