Construction bookkeeping is only useful when the numbers land against the right job, phase, and cost code. This desk maintains that discipline: coding costs as they arrive, keeping committed costs and change orders current, chasing the backup behind every pay application, and preparing the inputs your accountant needs for WIP and month-end. Your controller, bookkeeper, or CPA retains accounting treatment, payment approval, tax positions, and every financial decision.
A reliable service lane starts with controlled inputs and a named client reviewer—not a broad list of tasks with unclear authority.
The exact format is agreed during onboarding. These are the operating records the service is designed to keep current.
Identify where each invoice, waiver, commitment, and approval originates and where it belongs.
Agree what is incomplete, who resolves it, and how long it can remain open.
Restrict the desk to the least access needed and keep payment and accounting authority with the client.
Give the owner or finance lead a short list of collection priorities and blocked records.
Answers describe how the service is scoped and where authority stays with your team.
Job costing allocates every labour hour, material invoice, subcontractor payment, and equipment charge to a specific job, phase, and cost code, so you can compare actual cost against budget while the job is still running. It lags when coding happens at month-end instead of on arrival, when committed costs from purchase orders and subcontracts are not tracked, and when change orders are priced but never added to the budget. The fix is rhythm, not software.
It covers the same recurring work, but the boundary is explicit: the desk records, codes, chases, and reconciles against rules you approve, and prepares inputs for your accountant. It does not choose accounting treatment, approve payments, move money, file tax, or sign off financial statements. Those stay with your controller, bookkeeper, or CPA.
The desk prepares the inputs a WIP schedule needs: costs to date coded by job, committed costs, approved change orders, and billing to date. Percentage-of-completion judgment, revenue recognition, and the schedule your accountant signs are professional accounting work and stay with them.
Invoice intake and coding to your chart of accounts, accounts payable and receivable follow-up, commitment and subcontract log maintenance, job-cost data entry, lien waiver tracking, pay application assembly, and a weekly exception summary. This is administrative support, not licensed accounting, tax, audit, or financial advice.
It is bookkeeping-adjacent administrative support. The desk maintains records, chases documents, prepares entries, and surfaces exceptions. Your accountant, controller, or CPA retains professional responsibility for the books, financial statements, tax positions, and any advice. We do not represent the desk as licensed accounting.
The desk can assemble the application package: schedule of values updates, stored materials records, lien waiver collection, and supporting documentation against your format. Certification, the amounts claimed, and submission to the owner or architect remain with your authorised staff.
Most commonly QuickBooks, Sage 100 and 300, and the finance modules inside Procore, Buildertrend, and JobTread. The desk works inside your existing system at an agreed permission level; CVA does not hold or move your financial data into separate tooling.
Under a written access policy agreed before onboarding completes, recording which system, which permission level, which actions are allowed, and how access is revoked. Payment release, banking authority, and approval thresholds always remain with your internal staff.
An invoice exception list, collections priorities ranked by age and amount, a missing-document tracker, commitment status, and lien waiver position against the upcoming payment run. It is built to be reviewed in a few minutes and to surface decisions, not to restate the ledger.
We’ll map the source information, recurring output, responsible roles, client approvals, and a measurable first scope.