Trades · Electrical contractors
Bookkeeping for electrical contractors.
More Washington contracting businesses hold an electrical licence than work in any other specialty trade. It is also one of the hardest trades to job-cost: copper moves, permits follow the city line, and every hour carries an L&I premium. Here is what that means for your books, and what I do about it.
1,082
92%
+56%
Electrical · trade profile
2026
L&I electrical contractor
$4,000
Administrator or master
L&I or the city
0601
$1.4370 / hour
Permits
The permit follows the city line.
L&I sells electrical permits and inspects the work across most of Washington, but some cities run their own. In south King County, which office you buy from depends on which side of the city line the job is on.
Why a bookkeeper cares about permits
A permit is a cost of the job it was bought for. When it is billed on to the customer, the Department of Revenue counts it as part of the contract price, which puts it inside the sales tax, not beside it.
- Every permit coded to its job, so the cost lands where it was spent.
- Permit charges billed inside the taxable contract price, the way the state treats them.
- The right office for the address. A Kent job and a Renton job ten minutes apart buy their permits from different places, on different fee schedules.
Materials
Copper does not hold still for your bid.
Wire is priced on the day you buy it, not the day you bid. Between signing a fixed-price contract and pulling the last run, copper can move far enough to take the profit with it.
On a two-hour service call, last month’s materials price is close enough. On a three-month tenant improvement it is a bet, and the only way to know whether you won it is to cost the job when it is done.
- Materials costed to the job from the supplier invoice, not estimated at year end.
- Bid against actual on every job, so you can see whether it was materials or labour that moved.
- Your own history in hand when you decide whether the next bid needs a materials escalation clause.
Spring 2024, in three numbers
393.2
458.5
+16.6%
A job bid in March and wired in May paid about a sixth more for the same wire.
Job costing
Read every job like a panel schedule.
Every dollar of a contract ends up on a circuit somewhere. Job costing labels each one, so you can see which jobs carried their load and which only looked like they did.
What the schedule tells you
Most contractors know their revenue and their bank balance. Fewer can say, job by job, where the money went. With every bill and every hour coded to a job, a schedule like this exists for every job you finish, not just the ones you worry about.
- Labour from timesheets, at a loaded rate that includes the L&I premium.
- Materials from supplier invoices, matched to the job they went into.
- Overhead spread on a rule you choose, the same way every month, so jobs compare fairly.
L&I premiums
Every hour has a price tag.
Washington workers’ comp is not a percentage of payroll. L&I charges a premium for every hour worked, at a rate set by the work’s risk class. For electrical wiring, class 0601, that is $1.4370 an hour in 2026.
Why it belongs in job cost
Because it is charged by the hour, the premium behaves like wages, not rent. A job that ran 200 hours over budget carried 200 hours of premium too. Part of it, $0.2449 an hour for this class, comes out of the worker’s pay. The rest is the business’s.
- Hours kept by risk class from real timesheets. L&I does not accept percentages or estimates, and hours without records go to the highest-rated class the worker was exposed to.
- Premiums reconciled to what L&I actually billed, quarter by quarter.
- Payroll and the quarterly report stay with your payroll provider. I make sure what they report lands on the right jobs.
Progress billing
Part of the profit is held back.
On public works in Washington, the owner holds back up to 5% of the money earned as retainage until the job is finished. Plenty of private contracts copy the idea. Either way, it is money you have earned and not yet been paid.
What that means for your books
- Retainage as its own receivable, job by job, so it never melts into general accounts receivable.
- A schedule of values kept in step with the ledger, so every draw ties back to the contract.
- Release requested as soon as the contract allows, with the paperwork ready, instead of found in an old balance six months later.
The work
What I actually do about all this.
I keep the books. I do not file your taxes and I am not your CPA. What I do is make sure the numbers behind every one of those filings are right, and hand your tax preparer statements they can work from without rebuilding anything.
- Every job costed: labour hours, materials, permits and L&I premiums coded to the job they belong to.
- Bid against actual on finished jobs, so the next estimate starts from your real numbers.
- Retainage and progress billing tracked as their own receivables, draw by draw.
- Every account reconciled to the penny against its real statement, every month.
- City and state filings fed from clean books, for every city you work in.
Where to start
Behind on the books, or not sure they would survive a look? Start with cleanup. Running fine but want them kept right? Start with monthly.
Questions
Questions electrical contractors ask.
Don’t see yours? Email me at paulaleksic@apcbookkeeping.com
Yes, and with shops that do both. Service work and construction behave differently in the books: small tickets paid quickly on one side, progress billing and retainage on the other. I set the books up to keep them apart, so you can see what each side of the business earns.
For job costing, yes. One account tells you what you spent on materials in a month, not which job it went into. Coding supplier invoices to jobs is a setup change, done once, and then it becomes part of the monthly routine.
No. Payroll and the quarterly L&I report stay with a payroll provider, and I can introduce you to one I trust. My side is making sure the wages, taxes and premiums it produces land on the right jobs and in the right accounts, and that what L&I billed ties out to the hours in your books.
With cleanup: rebuild the ledger from your statements, reconcile every account, and find out where things really stand before anything else is filed. Multi-year cleanups are routine work here, and once they are done the monthly routine keeps the books from slipping again.
Book a free consult
Tell me where the books stand.
Fifteen questions about your business and your books. I read every one personally, and you get a straight answer about what it would take to get every job costed properly.