Bookkeeping by Blue Collar Bureau
Clean books. Real job costing. One monthly number.
Bookkeeping by Blue Collar Bureau is bookkeeping and financial reporting built for trades and franchise systems. We catch up messy books, keep them clean every month, and show you what every job and every location actually made.
- Built by a franchise operator
- Job costing built in
- Franchise-native reporting
- Your CPA stays your CPA
Revenue
$412,800
Gross margin
38.4%
Labor % of revenue
27.1%
Cash on hand
$96,240
Profit by service line
The books we keep clean
HVAC
Plumbing
Electrical
Roofing
Landscaping
Lawn Care
Solar
Construction
Concrete
Handyman
Fencing
Painting
Window Cleaning
Pressure Washing
Pest Control
Manufacturing- HVAC
- Plumbing
- Electrical
- Roofing
- Landscaping
- Lawn Care
- Solar
- Construction
- Concrete
- Handyman
- Fencing
- Painting
- Window Cleaning
- Pressure Washing
- Pest Control
- Manufacturing
14
Months the average owner is behind on their books
68%
Contractors who cannot name their most profitable service line
11
Hours a month an owner spends categorizing transactions
20%
What a lender or buyer discounts for messy books
You did not start a business to become a bookkeeper.
Who it's for
Pick the one that sounds like you.
Caught up and kept clean
Every month closed on schedule, every account matched to the bank.
Know what every job made
Profit per job after labor, materials, subs, and overhead.
Reports you can read on a tailgate
Plus the statements your CPA and your lender expect.
What's included
Everything your books need. Nothing you have to chase.
Monthly Bookkeeping
Every transaction categorized, every account matched to the bank, every month closed on schedule.
Catch-Up and Clean-Up
Months or years behind? We rebuild the history, then keep it clean going forward.
Job and Project Costing
Profit by job, by crew, by service line, by location, after labor, materials, subs, and overhead.
Accounts Payable
Vendor bills entered, coded, approved, and scheduled. No late fees, no duplicates.
Accounts Receivable and Invoicing
Invoices out on time, payments recorded, aging tracked. Cash stops leaking.
Payroll Reporting
Payroll reconciled into the books so labor cost is always right in your job costing.
Month, Quarter, and Year-End Close
Closed periods, adjustments handled, year-end package ready before tax season.
Financial Statements and Custom Reporting
P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, plus margin by service line, labor as a percent of revenue, and the KPIs that feed your scorecard.
Software Setup and Migration
QuickBooks Online or Xero set up right, or migrated from whatever you use now, with a chart of accounts built for your trade.
Franchise Multi-Location Bookkeeping
Standardized chart of accounts, location-level books, brand-level roll-ups, royalty and marketing fund reporting support, Item 19 data support.
CPA Collaboration
We keep the books. Your CPA keeps the taxes. Everyone gets a clean year-end package.
What we do not do: we do not prepare or file taxes and we do not perform audits. We work alongside the CPA you already have, or we can introduce you to one.
How it works
How it works, explained like an operator would.
You connect your accounts once. We do the rest, on a fixed monthly schedule, with a dedicated team that knows your business.
Review
A short conversation and a look at your books. You get a Financial Snapshot and a package recommendation.
Connect
Bank, credit card, loan, merchant, and payroll accounts connected with read-only feeds wherever possible.
Clean up
If you are behind, we rebuild the history first. Every account matched to the bank.
Monthly close
Transactions categorized, accounts reconciled, jobs costed, books closed on a fixed date every month.
Report
Your monthly report lands in your inbox and your portal: P&L, balance sheet, cash, job profitability, and your KPIs.
Year-end
Your CPA gets a clean, closed, documented package before tax season starts.
Every job. Every location. One report.
Delivered on the same date every month.
Not sure what you need? That is exactly what the Bookkeeping Review is for. Sometimes the answer is a one-time clean-up and nothing more. We will tell you that too.
Why us
Why this is different (and why it matters).
Built by an operator, not an accountant
Blue Collar Bureau was founded by someone who built, ran, and sold a 13-unit franchise. We know a P&L on the 25th of next month is useless if you cannot see which crew lost money last week.
Trades-native
Job costing is the product, not an add-on. Labor, materials, subs, equipment, and overhead allocated the way a contractor thinks about them.
Franchise-native
One chart of accounts across the system, location-level books, brand-level roll-ups, royalty reporting support, and Item 19 data support.
Review first
We look at what you have and tell you exactly what it takes to get clean and stay clean before anyone signs anything.
One relationship, whole ecosystem
Your books feed your scorecard, your payroll reconciles automatically, and your growth plan runs on the same platform.
Exit-ready by default
Every month we close is a month a buyer, a lender, or a broker will not have to discount.
The offer
It starts with a Bookkeeping Review.
A 30-minute conversation and a quick look at your books. We tell you where you stand, what it will take to get clean, and which package fits, then hand you a one-page Financial Snapshot with the recommendation and the next step.
- Where the books stand today
- Accounting software and chart of accounts
- Entities, locations, and states
- Accounts to reconcile
- Transaction volume and complexity
- Payroll and how it hits the books
- Invoicing and bills
- Reports you actually get
- Franchise reporting requirements
- 12 to 36 month goals (growth, financing, exit)
- Books status
- Behind by 14 months
- Software
- QuickBooks Online, no chart of accounts
- Entities and locations
- 2 entities, 3 locations, 2 states
- Accounts to reconcile
- 6 bank, 3 credit card, 1 loan
- Job costing
- No
- Reports received today
- A P&L at tax time
- Recommended package
- Catch-Up, then Pro
- Next step
- Clean-up scoped, 3 week timeline
Sample snapshot. Yours is built from your own books during the review.
Use cases
Where Bookkeeping shows up.
Visual proof
Reports an owner actually reads.
Revenue
$412,800
Gross margin
38.4%
Labor % of revenue
27.1%
Cash on hand
$96,240
Net profit
$61,900
Net margin
15.0%
Plus the P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statement your CPA and lender expect.
Packages
Three packages. One review to tell you which.
Essentials
Single-location shops and new franchisees
- Monthly bookkeeping
- Reconciliations
- Monthly financial statements
- Software setup
- CPA year-end package
Pro
Growing trades businesses with crews and multiple service lines
- Everything in Essentials
- Job and project costing
- Accounts payable
- Accounts receivable
- Payroll reporting
- Custom KPI reporting
- Scorecard feed
Franchise Systems
Franchisors and multi-unit franchisees
- Everything in Pro
- Standardized chart of accounts across locations
- Location-level books
- Brand-level roll-up reporting
- Royalty and marketing fund reporting support
- Item 19 data support
Catch-Up and Clean-Up
A one-time rebuild of your history, then a smooth handoff into a monthly package.
Every package is scoped after the Bookkeeping Review based on transaction volume and complexity. You see the number before you commit to anything.
The Franchise Program
Bring Bookkeeping to your whole system.
For franchisors
Give every owner a brand-standard chart of accounts and a bookkeeping package from day one. Franchisee-elected, franchisee-contracted. You get consistent numbers, faster royalty reporting, and Item 19 data you can stand behind.
For multi-unit franchisees
Every location on one chart of accounts, location-level books, and one consolidated report.
For emerging brands
A validation talking point for franchise sales, a cleaner onboarding kit, and benchmarking across the system for the first time.
Two minutes
How healthy are your books?
How current are your books?
Before and after
Your month, before and after.
Doing it yourself
With Bookkeeping
Books
Job costing
Reports
Bills and invoices
Franchise reporting
Financing
Exit
Working together
How we work together.
- 1
Review
- 2
Financial Snapshot
- 3
Package and onboarding
- 4
Clean-up (if needed)
- 5
Monthly close and reporting
- 6
Year-end package to your CPA
A dedicated team that knows your business, reachable when you need them, with a quarterly check-in from Blue Collar Bureau.
The ecosystem
Part of the Blue Collar Bureau ecosystem.
Franbassador books the job. Bookkeeping shows you what it made. Crew Command puts it on your scorecard. Hard Hat HR pays the crew that did it.
FAQ
Straight answers.