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Trades

Track trades, investments, and portfolio transactions

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10 min read

Air Duct and Dryer Vent Cleaning Bookkeeping: Price Per Vent, Track Every Upsell, Depreciate the Rig

Residential duct cleaning runs roughly $25–$50 per supply vent (about $75 for returns) and dryer vent add-ons average $145, so a one-line invoice hides your margin. This guide itemizes base fees, vent counts and add-ons, costs the four buckets behind each job, capitalizes a $9,000 vacuum rig instead of expensing it as supplies, and tracks the five KPIs — revenue per vent, revenue per tech-hour, upsell attach rate, callback rate, revenue per truck per day — that decide whether the next rig pays for itself.

Mike Thrift

bookkeepingsmall-businesstrades
11 min read

Fire Extinguisher Service Bookkeeping: Tag Routes, 6-Year Tear-Downs, and the NFPA 10 Calendar That Pays You

How a fire extinguisher service company should structure its books around the NFPA 10 calendar — separate revenue lines for annual tags, recharges, 6-year internal maintenance ($30–$60 per unit) and hydrostatic testing ($20–$100 per unit), deferred revenue for prepaid contracts, MACRS depreciation for vans and recharge rigs, and the route-density KPIs that decide whether the truck earns money.

Mike Thrift

small-businessbookkeepingcompliance
10 min read

Elevator Service Company Bookkeeping: Costing Every Callback at the Burdened CET Rate

How elevator service companies job-cost full-maintenance and exam-and-lube contracts per unit — booking prepayments as deferred revenue, costing callbacks at a burdened CET mechanic rate of 85 to 100 dollars an hour rather than the 52-dollar wage, carrying truck stock as inventory, and pricing renewals from twelve months of callback history.

Mike Thrift

bookkeepingjob-costingsmall-business
18 min read

Roofing Contractor Bookkeeping: The WIP Schedule That Tells You Whether Your Bank Balance Is Lying

A roofing WIP schedule ties revenue to work actually completed rather than to when you invoiced — percent complete equals costs to date divided by total estimated costs, and earned revenue equals percent complete times revised contract price. This guide walks a $192,000 TPO re-roof through the math, explains over- versus under-billing, retainage receivable and warranty accruals, and covers when Section 460 forces percentage-of-completion for tax (roughly $31 million in average gross receipts for 2026, or contracts running past two years).

Mike Thrift

constructionjob-costingrevenue-recognition
8 min read

Form 8697 Look-Back Interest: Who Files, How the Calculation Works, and What the New IRS Calculator Does

Form 8697 look-back interest settles the gap between estimated and actual results on long-term contracts reported under the percentage-of-completion method — the IRS recomputes prior-year income with final figures and charges or refunds interest only, without reopening those returns. This guide covers who must file under IRC Section 460, the three-step calculation, the separate-filing rule for interest refunds, and what the Excel PCM calculator the IRS released on May 29, 2026 does and doesn't do.

Mike Thrift

taxtax-compliancetax-preparation
9 min read

Commercial Diving Company Bookkeeping: Saturation Gear Depreciation, Hazard Pay, and Job Costing

Commercial diving companies that depreciate saturation systems on a flat calendar schedule, lump hazard pay and depth pay into a single wages line, or book topside support crew as overhead routinely misprice their bids — this guide covers usage-based depreciation for saturation gear, the diver pay stack, and job-costing topside labor specific to commercial dive operations.

Mike Thrift

bookkeepingsmall-businessjob-costing
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