Licensed trades deserve licensed accounting.
You hold a license the state can pull, carry insurance that audits your payroll, and run a business that’s half service calls and half construction contracts. Your books should be kept by a firm that’s licensed too, and that knows those two halves have different economics.
Service and construction are different businesses. Your books should know it.
One margin hiding two
Demand service calls and new-construction contracts carry different pricing, labor economics, and risk. Books that lump them together can’t tell you which side is making the money. Ours split them, down to margin per truck.
Journeymen, apprentices, and helpers
Trades payroll has layers: licensed journeymen, registered apprentices, helpers, and the occasional sub. Each has its own compliance and cost profile, and your workers’-comp audit will check whether you classified them right.
Vans coded like commuter cars
Service vans are rolling warehouses. The deduction method (actual costs vs. mileage, depreciation, heavy-vehicle rules) should be chosen per vehicle on purpose. Get it right at purchase, because it’s hard to fix later.
Parts, inventory, and the taxable line
Truck stock, job materials, and Texas sales tax on the mix of labor and parts: small categorization habits that compound into real tax differences over a year of tickets.
What we handle for licensed trades.
Tax preparation, bookkeeping with margin by truck, tax planning and vehicle deductions, forecasting and growth decisions, entity and S-corp analysis, and trades payroll.
A license narrows the field and adds to the cost. Price for both.
Electricians are licensed by TDLR and plumbers by TSBPE, and in both trades the company works through a licensed individual. General contractors carry no statewide Texas license. That is why a licensed shop’s economics read differently, and why the books should show it.
Wage tiers are a costing problem
Apprentice, journeyman, and master hours carry different costs and different billable value. Run at a blended rate, the apprentice-heavy jobs subsidize the licensed ones and neither shows its real margin. The pricing decision then gets made on an average that describes no actual job.
What the license holder is paid
When the master is also the owner, one number is doing two jobs: reasonable compensation for an S-corp, and the cost of holding the credential the company operates under. We run it as one analysis on your numbers.
Renewal, education, bonding
License renewals, continuing education, bonding, and insurance are predictable annual costs of staying licensed. Separated from overhead, they inform what the work has to be priced at.
What the trades ask us.
Should I deduct my work van by mileage or actual costs?
Per vehicle, on purpose. Mileage is simple and can win for lighter use. Actual costs (fuel, insurance, repairs, and depreciation) usually win for a heavily used, well-equipped service van, especially in the year it’s purchased. The catch is that the first-year choice constrains later ones. It deserves a deliberate decision.
When does hiring my first W-2 employee beat using subs?
When you control the schedule and the work. At that point the law may already consider them an employee regardless of what the check says. Economically, a steady book of service calls usually favors a W-2 helper or apprentice; overflow and specialty work favor genuine subs. We price both paths with the employment taxes included, so the comparison is honest.
My workers’-comp audit is asking for payroll records. What do they want?
Payroll by classification: who did what kind of work, for how much, with overtime broken out, plus certificates for any subs you’re claiming shouldn’t count against your premium. Clean payroll records turn the audit into an afternoon; reconstructed ones turn it into a premium adjustment. This is one of the quiet payoffs of books kept properly all year.
Does Texas sales tax apply to my service work?
Sometimes. The line runs through distinctions like residential versus commercial work and repair versus new construction, with the parts-and-labor mix mattering too. It’s genuinely one of the trickier compliance areas for Texas trades, and the cost of guessing wrong compounds ticket by ticket. We sort your typical job types into the right buckets once, then keep the filings on schedule.