It’s the 10th of the month. Payroll already hit. Vendors are calling.
You pull reports, but something feels off.

Cash doesn’t match the bank. Job costs look incomplete. Last month’s numbers keep changing.

One contractor sees 30 cost codes for a small remodel and still can’t tell where profit leaked. Another has four total cost codes across every job and wonders why labor always “looks fine” until cash runs out.

A project wraps up. Cash hit the bank. The job felt profitable. But when you try to review labor, materials, and subs by phase, the numbers don’t line up—or worse, everything is lumped into one bucket.

The invoice came in. The receipt exists. The signed change order was saved. But when payroll hits, or a job review comes up, no one can find the paperwork fast enough to prove where the money went.

You know the documents exist — emails, texts, photos, QuickBooks attachments — but no one can find the full trail fast.

W-2 vs 1099 in construction isn’t about finding loopholes. It’s about understanding where labor sits on the control–independence spectrum and structuring relationships to match reality.

Labor performance problems don’t start in the field—they start at job setup. When labor budgets, cost codes, and payroll mapping aren’t built before the first hour is logged, overruns stay hidden until the job is over. Early job setup is what makes labor performance measurable, visible, and correctable while the job is still running.

Labor is the number one reason contractors lose money on jobs — not materials or subs. The problem isn’t effort, it’s visibility. In this guide, we break down a simple system for tracking labor by job, phase, and cost code, explain why payroll works differently in construction, and show how understanding true labor cost helps you protect profit before a job slips.

Learn how contractors can build trade-specific cost codes that improve job costing, invoice coding, labor tracking, and service profitability. A clear framework to create consistent cost codes for construction, trades, and remodeling companies.

How contractors can set up a simple invoice approval workflow to verify invoices, assign cost codes, prevent job costing errors, and keep accounting clean. Includes steps, roles, and folder structure.

A clear, step-by-step system for contractors to capture, organize, and process vendor invoices without losing receipts, missing write-offs, or destroying job costing accuracy. This guide shows trades and construction businesses exactly how to collect invoices in real time, route everything to one inbox, store documents correctly, and build a simple workflow that keeps accounting clean, protects profitability, and scales as the business grows.