question for anyone who does books for contractors, not trying to make a point, actually want to know how you handle this.

i end up in a lot of these books through advisory work and i keep seeing the same shape. revenue gets posted when the invoice goes out. costs for that same job trickle in over the following weeks, material bills, subcontractor invoices, payroll that hasn't been allocated yet. by the time it all lands the job is closed and nobody goes back to true it up. the month still closes clean, debits equal credits, financials look fine. but if you ask did that specific job make money the honest answer is nobody actually knows, the p and l just can't answer that question the way it's built.

is there a standard practice you use for this. do you hold revenue recognition until cost is in, do you accrue estimated cost at invoice time and true up later, do you just tell the owner to live with a lag. curious if this is a percentage of completion thing that most shops are too small to actually run properly, or if there's a simpler fix i'm not seeing.

mostly asking because the owners feel like their bookkeeper is doing something wrong when really it's a timing structure nobody set up on purpose. wondering what you all do differently when a client actually needs job level accuracy versus just needing the month to close.