For remodelers, custom builders and commercial trade contractors working in Roswell. Job costing that holds up on small jobs, WIP schedules for the bigger ones, and tax planning from a licensed CPA firm.
Free 30-Minute ConsultationRoswell is a big, settled city of about 91,500 people by the Census Bureau's 2025 estimate, a little below its 2020 level. When a city isn't adding residents, much of its construction is remodeling, additions, teardowns and redevelopment: smaller jobs, more of them, and easier to lose money on. We build job costing and overhead allocation that work at that scale, and as a licensed CPA firm we prepare the statements a bank or surety will rely on.
Steady rather than explosive. The Census Bureau estimates Roswell at 92,834 residents at the 2020 base and 91,505 in July 2025, a dip of about 1.4%. In a Fulton County city that isn't adding people, more of the work happens in existing houses and existing commercial buildings than on fresh dirt.
The biggest recent public job is downtown. Roswell selected one firm to design and build a 395-space parking deck, paid for with a $20 million bond voters approved in 2022. According to WSB-TV, it broke ground in August 2025.
For a trade contractor, a public design-build job like that can easily be the largest contract on the books, with retainage held back for months, strict pay application dates and insurance and bond requirements that flow down from the prime contract. Meanwhile the day-to-day work is kitchens, baths, additions and storefront refits. Two very different kinds of jobs, and one set of books that has to make sense of both.
Because the margin on each job is thin and the overhead is spread across dozens of them. Here's a remodeler doing $2.4 million a year across 40 jobs, about $60,000 each.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Revenue (40 jobs at about $60,000) | $2,400,000 |
| Direct job costs: labor, materials, subcontractors (72%) | $1,728,000 |
| Gross profit (28%) | $672,000 |
| Overhead: office, trucks, insurance, owner salary | $504,000 |
| Net profit before tax (7%) | $168,000 |
| Overhead each job has to carry ($504,000 ÷ 40) | $12,600 |
Now take one $60,000 kitchen that comes in at a 20% gross margin. It earns $12,000, less than the $12,600 of overhead it has to carry. On the job report it looks fine. For the company it lost $600. Multiply that by a handful of underpriced jobs and the year's profit is gone. Getting the direct cost right starts with your true labor burden, and our job costing guide covers the rest.
A setup simple enough for 40 jobs a year: a short cost code list, every receipt and hour assigned to a job, and a report you'll actually read.
Overhead allocated per job or per labor hour, so your markup covers what it costs to keep the doors open. That number goes straight into your next bid.
When a commercial job runs for months, a monthly WIP schedule shows whether it's on track. Run a quick check with our WIP calculator.
Retainage tracked by job and by release date, so money held on a public or commercial project stays in your cash forecast. See our retainage guide.
How much to take, in what form, and when, planned with your tax picture in mind. Start with our guide to paying yourself as a construction owner.
Contabilidad, costos por obra e impuestos en español para remodeladores y subcontratistas que trabajan en Roswell.
Roswell City Hall sits at 38 Hill Street, and building permits run through the city's Community Development department. Our own office is at 1775 The Exchange SE, Suite 520, in Cumberland. Most Roswell clients send documents through a secure portal and meet with us by video each month, and we sit down in person for planning, bank renewals and anything with a surety. We're a licensed CPA firm and a member of the Associated General Contractors of America.
We also work with contractors in Alpharetta, Fulton County, Marietta and Cobb County. For the full picture, see our construction CPA services.
Free 30-minute consultation, in English or Spanish. Bring a few recent jobs and we'll show you which ones really paid.
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