Trades · Roofing contractors
Bookkeeping for roofing contractors.
Roofing carries a workers’ comp rate four times an electrician’s, a season set by the rain, and insurance jobs paid by two parties in three instalments. Here is what that means for your books, and what I do about it.
283
$5.79
16%
Roofing · trade profile
2026
Specialty contractor
$15,000
0507
$5.7930 / hour
$1.0034 / hour
$11,123
L&I premiums
Four times an electrician’s rate.
Washington charges workers’ comp by the hour worked, at a rate set by risk class. Roof work, class 0507, is $5.7930 an hour in 2026. Across one full-time year that is $11,123 for one roofer, before a single bundle of shingles is bought.
A labour cost, not overhead
At this rate the premium is too big to bury in overhead. It belongs in the labour rate of every bid and the cost of every job, so the price carries it and the job report shows it.
- Premium built into the loaded hourly rate you bid with.
- What L&I billed reconciled each quarter against the hours in your books.
- Your experience factor watched, because a better claims record lowers the rate and a worse one raises it.
Hours by class
Office hours count only with records to prove them.
Clerical office work has its own L&I class at $0.2223 an hour, a twenty-sixth of the roofing rate. L&I only accepts the lower rate when your time records show the hours belong there.
What the rule says
Hours are reported in the class of the work actually done, from original time records. L&I does not accept percentages or estimates, and hours it cannot match to a record go to the highest-rated class the worker was exposed to. On a roofing account, that is usually 0507.
- Time records by worker and class, kept as the work happens rather than rebuilt at quarter end.
- Office, sales and estimating roles written down, so it is clear whose hours sit where.
- The hours your payroll provider reports checked against the books before the quarter closes.
The season
The rain sets the calendar.
Seattle-Tacoma averages ninety-three days a year with a tenth of an inch of rain or more, and four in five of them fall between October and April. The work bunches into the dry months. The truck payments, the rent and the insurance do not.
Planning the wet months
Fixed costs do not care about the weather. The months that earn less than they cost have to be paid for by the months that earn more, and the only question is whether that happens on purpose.
- A month-by-month cash plan built from your last two seasons.
- Fixed costs listed and totalled, so you know what a wet month costs to stand still.
- Each month compared with the same month last year, not with the month before.
An average year at Sea-Tac
75
12.6
12.9 days
1.8 days
Insurance jobs
Two payers, three cheques, one job.
On a claim job, the insurer often pays the actual cash value first, the homeowner pays the deductible, and the depreciation the insurer held back arrives only once the work is done. The job is not paid until the last cheque clears.
- A receivable for each payer, so what the insurer owes and what the homeowner owes never blur together.
- Held-back depreciation tracked job by job until it is released.
- Supplements recorded against the original job, not booked as new work.
Where the cash goes missing
The last insurance cheque is the one that slips. It only arrives when somebody sends the completion paperwork, and on many jobs it is bigger than the profit. A list of open claim balances, reviewed every month, is how it gets chased.
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.
- L&I premiums in the cost of every job, at the hourly rate, and reconciled every quarter.
- Hours by class backed by records, so office hours are not billed at the roofing rate.
- A cash plan for the wet months, built from your own seasons.
- Insurance jobs tracked payer by payer, until the last cheque clears.
- Every account reconciled to the penny against its real statement, every month.
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 roofing contractors ask.
Don’t see yours? Email me at paulaleksic@apcbookkeeping.com
I cannot change your rate, but I can make sure you are not paying for more than you owe: hours reported in the right class from real time records, office hours kept out of the roofing class where the records support it, and every quarter reconciled. Your experience factor, which moves with your claims history, is between you and L&I, but I can show you what it is costing.
As money held for the customer until the work is done, not as income on the day it arrives. That keeps a busy spring of bookings from looking like a profitable one before a single roof is on.
Yes. Claim work needs a receivable for each payer and a list of held-back depreciation by job, and I set the books up that way from the start.
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 your L&I costs, your season and your claim jobs under control.