Independent bookkeeping & advisory firm · Serving clients nationwide, remotely
In Indiana, a contractor on a time-and-material contract is generally a retail merchant that must register with the Department of Revenue and collect sales tax on the material portion, while a lump-sum contractor pays sales or use tax on its construction material and collects none from the customer (DOR Information Bulletin #60). We set the books up for how each contract is written, build real job costing, WIP, and retainage, keep certified-payroll-ready records, and map county-LIT crew payroll — all in your own QuickBooks file.
Job costing, WIP, certified payroll — delivered by TechBrot, in your own QuickBooks file.
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If your file needs our paid diagnostic first, its fee is credited in full against the cleanup. Either way, you get a fixed fee in writing before any work starts.
Indiana construction accounting from TechBrot shows which job made money: job costing by cost code, WIP schedules, retainage and certified-payroll-ready records in your own QuickBooks file, with monthly bookkeeping at $500–$2,500+/mo. Indiana’s flat 7% sales tax lands differently on time-and-material and lump-sum contracts, so each contract is booked the way it is written.
They took something that felt overwhelming to me as a first-year business owner and made it simple.
What stood out the most was TechBrot Inc’s attention to detail.
Profitable-looking builders go under when these go unmanaged. Knowing which one you’re in tells us where to start.
Costs land in company-wide buckets, not on jobs. You know the business made money this year — you don’t know which jobs made it and which quietly bled, so you bid the next one blind. The fix is job costing by project and cost code — labor, materials, equipment, subs — so every job shows true profit. If you can’t pull profit on a single completed job in under a minute, this is your starting point.
Without a WIP schedule you can’t see over- or under-billing — so cash looks healthy while you’ve borrowed against unearned revenue. Retainage held on both sides distorts the balance sheet further. The fix is WIP schedules (earned vs. billed) and retainage tracked separately on receivables and payables. Over-billing feels like profit until the job finishes; WIP shows reality before it bites.
Federally funded (Davis-Bacon) public jobs require certified payroll, and Indiana crews living across Hamilton, Marion, and the donut counties each carry a different county-LIT rate. Miss the certified-payroll report and you risk the contract; map the county codes wrong and payroll won’t reconcile. The fix is certified-payroll-ready records and county-LIT codes mapped per worker so compliance and the books hold.
Every engagement is scoped to your jobs and crew, delivered in your own QuickBooks file by your TechBrot team, with every close reviewed by a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor.
Labor, materials, equipment, and subcontractors tracked to each project and cost code — real job-level profitability you can bid from.
Indiana QuickBooks setupWork-in-progress schedules showing earned revenue versus billings, so cash and profit reflect reality mid-project — on percentage-of-completion or completed-contract.
Indiana monthly bookkeepingRetainage receivable and payable tracked separately, with AIA-style progress billing and lien-waiver discipline, so your balance sheet and cash position stay accurate.
Indiana bookkeepingCertified-payroll-ready records for federally funded (Davis-Bacon) public jobs, with crew labor coded to jobs and full payroll handled through our global payroll service.
PayrollClean subcontractor 1099 handling and each worker’s county-of-residence LIT rate mapped from the DOR list and withheld via Form WH-4, so payroll reconciles.
County income tax helpRebuild job costing from messy books, reclassify costs to the right projects and cost codes, fix retainage and 1099 coding, and reconcile to a known-good baseline.
Indiana cleanupUsing different job-management software? If it exports to QuickBooks, we can work with it. Ask on a call.
Every Indiana construction engagement follows the same four-phase rhythm — books accurate first, profit visibility second, advisory third.
A 30-minute call to map your jobs, crew, how you bill, where the books are breaking, and your certified-payroll and county-LIT picture. No pitch.
Configure job costing and cost codes, plus a cleanup to reclassify past costs and fix retainage and 1099 coding where needed.
Monthly reconciliation with job-cost reporting, WIP schedules, retainage tracking, certified-payroll-ready records, and county-LIT payroll cadence.
Job-profitability reporting and, as you scale, cash-flow and bonding advisory.
Once every job shows real profit and your WIP is clean, the question shifts from “are the books right?” to “how do we bid the next one better?” Which job types carry margin, when to chase bigger work, how cash flows across overlapping projects, what overhead each job should absorb — the decisions that separate Indiana builders who grow from those who stall as Central Indiana keeps expanding.
That’s where construction advisory comes in: a QuickBooks ProAdvisor who knows your job-cost data turning it into bid strategy, cash-flow forecasting, and bonding-ready financials. As automation handles routine entry, this judgment layer is where contractors find their edge. Explore fractional CFO & advisory
Checked against the Indiana DOR and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Every engagement runs on three roles: a client advisor who scopes it and stays your point of contact, a senior bookkeeper who prepares your setup and monthly close in your software, and a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor who reviews every close before it reaches you. A U.S.-based bookkeeper is available on request; we can share their public directory profile with you.
Senior bookkeepers who specialize in rental portfolios and Xero, and specialist partner practices for trust accounting for law firms and CFO advisory. We bring the right one onto your engagement when your business calls for it, under the same standards and review.
The 92-county LIT withholding matrix set up so each crew member’s county rate applies and payroll reconciles.
The engagementRebuild job costing and reclassify costs to the right Indiana projects, then reconcile to a CPA-ready baseline.
The engagementHow TechBrot builds books for contractors nationally — scoped for Indiana on the call.
The engagementSee how TechBrot tailors accounting to the way your industry runs in Indiana.
The engagementNot sure where your file stands? Start with the free QuickBooks file review · how Indiana compares: state-by-state tax quirks.
Construction runs on projects, not periods — revenue and cost track per job, often by percentage-of-completion, with retainage, change orders, and WIP that standard bookkeeping can’t handle. Indiana adds payroll-side wrinkles: the county local income tax withheld for each worker’s county of residence, which matters when crews live across Hamilton, Marion, and the donut counties, and certified payroll on federally funded (Davis-Bacon) public work, since Indiana repealed its own common construction wage law in 2015. We build job costing, WIP, retainage, and county-LIT-ready payroll into your QuickBooks file so the numbers are real and CPA-ready.
Yes. We configure job costing so labor, materials, equipment, and subcontractor costs track to each project and cost code — giving you real job-level profitability instead of a company-wide guess. For builders riding Hamilton County and Indianapolis growth, that’s what lets you bid the next job from real margin and see which work actually pays.
Yes. We maintain work-in-progress schedules showing earned revenue versus billings (over/under billing) and track retainage receivable and payable separately, so your balance sheet and cash position stay accurate mid-project. Over-billing feels like profit until the job finishes — a clean WIP schedule shows reality before it bites, which matters most when several jobs overlap.
Yes. Indiana repealed its own common construction wage law in 2015, so prevailing wage and certified payroll now come from the federal Davis-Bacon rules on federally funded public work. For those projects we keep certified-payroll-ready records with crew labor coded to jobs, and we map the county local income tax (LIT) for each worker’s county of residence (set January 1, withheld via Form WH-4). Full payroll runs through our global payroll service, and subcontractor 1099s are handled cleanly.
Indiana’s sales tax is a flat 7% statewide with no county or city add-ons, which simplifies materials handling compared with layered-tax states. We configure the single 7% rate in QuickBooks so taxable purchases and any applicable exemptions are coded correctly and the books reconcile. We track and prepare the numbers; you or your CPA file the return with the Indiana DOR.
With a cleanup. We reclassify past costs to the correct jobs and cost codes, rebuild job costing, fix retainage and 1099 coding, and reconcile to a known-good baseline — then transition into accurate monthly bookkeeping with WIP and retainage. Starting mid-mess is fine: the cleanup is built for it. Prefer to talk first? Call (877) 751-5575 and a client advisor will scope it with you.
Tell us how the business runs and where the books break. We’ll tell you which engagement fits your industry.
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