Home services accounting that shows revenue per truck and the real cost of every call.

Home services accounting fails generic bookkeeping at four distinct points. First, the fundamental operational unit is the truck or technician, not the project — revenue per truck per day (RPTD), average ticket, close rate, and callback rate are the metrics that determine whether the business is healthy, and none of them show up in a standard P&L. Second, service agreements and maintenance plans (HVAC twice-yearly tune-ups, pest control quarterly visits, lawn care annual programs) are paid upfront or on subscription but earn ratably over the service period — generic bookkeeping treats the cash payment as immediate revenue, overstating current revenue and understating deferred-revenue liabilities. Third, consumer financing through GreenSky, Synchrony, Wisetack, and EnerBank requires dealer-fee accounting (the contractor receives 88–95% of ticket; the dealer fee is a real cost) plus multi-year reconciliation of finance company payments back to original jobs. Fourth, field-service management platforms (ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber) are the operational source of truth for jobs and invoices, requiring summary-level reconciliation to QuickBooks rather than transaction-level sync. Generic bookkeeping handles none of this.

Revenue per truck per day (RPTD) is the headline operational metric for any dispatched-service business — total revenue divided by truck-days deployed. A two-truck HVAC company operating 5 days a week generates ~520 truck-days per year; if they did $1.5M in revenue, RPTD is ~$2,884. Healthy RPTD varies significantly by trade: HVAC service+install typically $2,500–$4,000+, plumbing $1,800–$3,000, electrical $1,500–$2,500, cleaning $400–$800 (much higher truck-days, lower ticket), pest control $800–$1,500. RPTD growing year over year means the operation is getting more productive per asset deployed; flat or declining RPTD while revenue grows means you’re just adding trucks without improving the unit economics. Pair RPTD with average ticket (revenue per call) and close rate (% of calls that convert to billable work) and you have the dispatched-service economic picture in three numbers.

Service agreements and maintenance plans are deferred revenue under ASC 606 — cash collected upfront or on subscription, but revenue recognized as service is delivered or ratably over the contract period (whichever pattern matches the performance obligation). A $300 annual HVAC maintenance plan covering two visits earns $150 per visit (if the visits are the performance obligation) or $25/month ratably (if access to service is the obligation). The cash sits as a deferred revenue liability on the balance sheet until earned. Most generic bookkeeping treats the $300 as immediate revenue when collected, which overstates current revenue by the amount of unearned plans, understates liabilities, and creates a mess when plans aren’t fulfilled (refunds, customer churn). Worse, on a fast-growing service-plan-selling business, the books look much more profitable than the cash flow suggests — until growth slows and the timing mismatch reverses. We configure deferred revenue accounts, post the recognition entries monthly, and produce the plan-level liability schedule that actually tells the owner what’s owed in future service.

Consumer financing is dominant in big-ticket home services — HVAC installs, water heater replacements, roof and exterior work. When a customer finances a $12,000 system through GreenSky, Synchrony, or Wisetack: the customer signs the loan, the finance company funds the contractor (typically within 1–5 business days), the contractor receives 88–95% of ticket (the dealer fee is 5–12% depending on the program and credit profile), and the customer pays the finance company over 24–120 months. Accounting requires recording the full $12,000 as revenue, the discount as a dealer-fee expense (not netted against revenue, which obscures both the revenue and the cost of capital), the funded amount as cash received. For longer-term zero-interest promotional periods, additional accrual treatment may apply. We configure financing accounts, reconcile finance-company statements monthly (matching individual jobs to deposits), and produce dealer-fee-as-percentage-of-financed-revenue reporting so the owner sees the true cost of offering financing.

Yes. Field-service management (FSM) platforms — ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, FieldEdge, Service Fusion, Workiz — are the operational source of truth for home services operations: dispatch, customer history, invoicing, payment processing, technician performance. The integration to QuickBooks is typically through summary-level journal entries (not transaction-level sync) since the FSM platform is where job-level detail lives. Monthly reconciliation: revenue from FSM matched to deposits in the bank, financing splits reconciled to finance company statements, sales tax accruals matched, customer balances aged appropriately. We work with all major FSM platforms — ServiceTitan and FieldEdge for larger operations (often $5M+), Housecall Pro and Jobber for small-to-mid (most common), Service Fusion and Workiz for specific trade niches. The FSM remains the operational system; QuickBooks remains the financial general ledger; the reconciliation discipline between them is what makes the books reliable.

Many home services businesses operate multiple trades — most commonly HVAC, plumbing, and electrical combined, sometimes adding generator service, indoor air quality, or smart-home integration. Multi-trade operators need per-trade P&L to know which trade actually drives profitability — gross margin, labor utilization, average ticket, and parts cost all vary significantly across trades, and a single consolidated P&L masks the trade that’s subsidizing the others. We configure Class or Service Item tracking by trade in QuickBooks, allocate shared costs (truck and equipment depreciation, dispatch and CSR labor, marketing, occupancy) across trades using a documented methodology, and produce per-trade contribution margin monthly. Multi-trade operators discover, on first honest per-trade reporting, that one trade typically subsidizes the others — usually the install-heavy trade (HVAC) carries the service-heavy trades, or the inverse depending on the operation. Knowing which is the precondition to acting on it.

Inventory management varies hugely by trade. HVAC carries substantial truck inventory ($5K–$15K per truck in parts, condensers, refrigerant) plus warehouse stock of equipment. Plumbing carries moderate truck inventory ($2K–$5K) plus fixture and water heater stock. Electrical similar to plumbing. Cleaning and pest control carry minimal inventory (chemicals, consumables). For inventory-heavy trades, the accounting challenges are perpetual inventory tracking (real-time inventory levels updated as parts are pulled for jobs), cycle counts to reconcile perpetual records to physical stock, shrinkage recognition (theft, damage, mis-counts, technician “truck losses”), and dead-stock identification. Inventory shrinkage of 2–5% of inventory value is typical; 5%+ signals operational problems. We configure inventory tracking, integrate with the FSM platform’s parts allocation, schedule cycle counts, and recognize shrinkage monthly. For multi-truck operations, by-truck inventory tracking becomes essential — and is where most home services bookkeeping fails.