Should I Hire a Construction Accountant?

Quick Answer

There are six factors that strongly determine if hiring a construction accountant is the right option for you. Here is the summary:

VARIABLE	RIGHT	WRONG
Financial Health	Looking to grow	Looking to maintain
Financial Engagement	You care about your financials and improving them	Financials take a back seat to other matters
Learning	Willing to learn and challenge yourself	Looking for outsourced work, someone to solely "take care of it"
Technology	Embracing new tech (or at least curious about it)	Avoid new tech, old-school
Data-Driven Decisions	Believe in the importance	Don't see value in data; would rather rely on intuition
Value of Professional Services	You believe in partnership: our relationship adds more value than it costs	You see this as a mere bookkeeping and data expense

Intro & Overview

Let's clear the air about something right off the bat:

A construction accountant is NOT for everyone.

The truth is, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to professional services. That is true for contractors just as much as for any business or industry.

Two practically identical contractors may have different preferences when hiring a marketing agency, lawyer, or bookkeeper. A construction accountant is no different.

Now, understandably, you may not know what a construction accountant is. After all, accounting often stops at year-end tax filings.

If you don't know what a construction accountant is, read Beyond Bookkeeping: What is a Construction Accountant?.

Construction accountant is the role, and a financial partnership is how we work together. Now let's discuss if it's right for you.

In this piece, we will cover every single factor that must be considered before you commit to a financial partnership with Mobilize. These factors are:

• Financial Health: Are you striving for business growth and/or stronger business financials?
• Financial Engagement: Are you able to prioritize financial success?
• Learning: Are you looking to improve financial literacy and challenge yourself?
• Technology: Are you willing to embrace technological solutions?
• Data-Driven Decisions: Are you committed to data-driven decision making?
• Value of Professional Services: Do you see a financial partnership as an expense, or an investment?

As you continue reading, we encourage you to reflect on your stance and to uncover (and even challenge) why your stance is as such. We believe in this type of reflection so strongly that we have created a 5-minute self-assessment for you.

You can take the self-assessment now, or after the article.

Factor 1: Your Financial Health Goals

In conversations about growth, we often (incorrectly) focus on one thing… revenue.

Let's get something straight here. Revenue means nothing without profitability to show for it.

The relevance of revenue is puny without profit.

So, when we assess growth (and health) as qualifying factors for financial partnerships, we must consider revenue among other financial indicators. Financial partnerships succeed when your priorities align with the four financial indicators below.

Profitability: You must be relentless in your pursuit to maintain or improve profitability.

Cash flow: Stemming from profitability, you must be interested in relieving cash pressures by accumulating cash and managing cash flow.

Equity: Beyond profitability, you should prefer to improve the health and value of your business. This means persistent profitability, accumulation of assets, and minimal debt.

Revenue: And lastly, yes, revenue is still important. You should strive to maintain or grow your revenue while keeping the other indicators intact.

By no means are we saying you need to be an accountant or finance guru to work with a construction accountant. It may be the case that these financial indicators are unclear. That is ok. What we are assessing is alignment of perspective: a willingness to gauge success by more than just revenue.

Factor 2: Your Engagement in Financial Success

This is the strongest indicator in determining whether a construction accountant is right for you. Simply put, you need to be committed to the process.

Unlike traditional bookkeeping or other professional services where the goal is to outsource, financial partnerships are a relationship and a process that require engagement. Given that every contractor in the entire world is insanely busy as it is, taking on a financial partnership requires reordering your priorities. You must prioritize the partnership, and be willing to allot some of your time to it.

Finance favours those who are focused on it.

Factor 3: Your Curiosity and Financial Literacy

If the financial indicators in Factor 1 were intimidating, not to worry. Financial partnerships do not require you to be financially literate. What you must bring is the willingness to learn.

Let's use sports to drive this point home.

Pro athletes are fanatical about their sport. Commitment is in their DNA, be that commitment to their team, their fans, or their personal development.

Athletes grow through challenges. Every single day they push themselves harder, striving for incremental improvement. They don't just practice what they want, and they definitely don't copy their competition. They have an acute understanding of what they need to do to succeed, and they put in the work.

Though your athletics career may have ended in high school, your business career is in full swing. The principles of athletics apply just as well to business.

Like an athlete, you must be committed to your business and to your personal growth.

You must challenge yourself.

You must embrace discomfort.

You must pursue all actions that drive success.

And the often-ignored success factor is financial literacy.

To state it clearly, many contractors work their ass off on everything except for their financials.

This is why we focus so deeply on financial education. In order to be financially successful, it is critical that you embrace business finance.

Financial ignorance is financial suicide.

If you lack curiosity about finance, the willingness to learn, or the ability to embrace discomfort, a construction accountant is not for you.

Factor 4: Your Stance on Technology

Rest assured, you do not need to be an AI engineer or software expert. Your construction accountant will bring the experience and expertise to the table.

To assess if a construction accountant is suitable for you, ask yourself, "Do I embrace or avoid new technology?"

When considering new tech for your business, hesitation is completely natural. Being selective is essential, but being avoidant is detrimental.

If you avoid technology in exchange for more traditional tools (like pen and paper), you are missing out on massive competitive advantages.

So, at a bare minimum, you must be willing to embrace the following technology:

• Accounting software (like QuickBooks and Dext)
• Employee time tracking software (like BusyBusy)

And just above the bare minimum, you should strongly consider:

• Project management software (like JobTread)
• AI tools (like ChatGPT or Claude)

Technology is the tool of the back-office trades.

You do not need to implement this tech stack yourself. Our financial partnerships often start with system and process implementation. What you must bring to the table is your willingness to embrace it.

Factor 5: Your Belief in Data-Driven Decision Making

The entire role of the construction accountant is centred around one objective: to boost the financial health of your business.

At Mobilize, we believe the path to success is in highly detailed bookkeeping and job costing. With accurate, project-level financials, you unlock an entirely new approach to making business decisions. In turn, your decisions become backed by data instead of gut feeling alone.

Here's an example of how we use data to improve estimating:

1. Issue an estimate, which gets accepted
2. The estimate becomes the project budget
3. You deliver the project
4. Project costs (labour, material) are tracked
5. Project costs are compared to the budget (i.e., estimate vs. actual)
6. We consider the variance, and determine what happened
7. We apply what we learned to the next estimate (back to top)

In order for a financial partnership to work, you must believe in this feedback loop for improving your estimates.

Beyond estimating, solid bookkeeping gives every decision a data-backed component. Whether you are considering new purchases, additional hiring, or new business opportunities, the data will highlight truths that had previously been mere assumptions.

Use data to support your decision making. Intuition is undermined by ignorance.

Factor 6: How You Value Professional Services

Every salesperson will tell you to "think of your purchase as an investment." Heck, you might even do the same with your clients!

No shame here, I make the same claim.

Financial partnerships done right will return multiple times what they cost.

As a relentless salesman, it is my duty to demonstrate the value of such an investment. But at the end of the day, if you see bookkeeping as an avoidable or annoying expense, or if you think the cost is too high for what it's worth, then a construction accountant might not be for you.

Because underpinning the investment pitch is the idea that, by spending the money and making the commitment, you will achieve your business goals and build a financially strong business. If you believe that, then fundamentally the outcome covers the cost.

Here are some related pieces on the matter that we highly advise you to check out.

• Coming soon: What does a construction accountant cost?
• Beyond Bookkeeping: What is a Construction Accountant?
• Coming soon: A client success story

Business strength requires buy-in.

In Summary

Financial partnerships are successful when you and your partner are aligned.

We have found that the six factors above, when aligned, are the principal determinants of success.

They're not for everybody, and that's totally fine. However, if after reading through this (or even completing the self-assessment) you think that a construction accountant is right for you, we'd be happy to answer your questions.