This is a guest contribution from Randal DeHart of FastEasyAccounting.com.

I have been involved with construction beginning in the mid 1960’s as a kid working in the family construction company through the present time.

Over the decades I have gathered and documented a comprehensive list of terms that describe construction. Some of them are meant to bring a smile to your face, some are serious and the rest I hope are simply entertaining.

This Article Contains Definitions That Begin With The Letter “C”

Cash – Cash is a fact and profit is an opinion. One will put a roof over your head, clothes on your body and groceries on the table. The other one will impress your banker. Keep your priorities straight.

Competition – Drags all participants to the bottom

Cooperation – Raises all participants to the top

Construction Pioneer – Contractor with flaming arrows in the back from asking the in house construction bookkeeper for accurate financial and job costing reports

C.P.A. – Someone who is qualified to do tax returns and we refer a lot of business to the ones that only do tax returns

C.P.A. Construction Consultant – Someone who has seen a bunch of tax returns and thinks they know how to run a construction business. They are generally more dangerous to the contractor’s financial health　than a drunken car salesman on a backhoe at a gas station, in the dark, digging up live fuel lines

C.P.A Doing Construction Bookkeeping – QuickBooks setup to make doing tax returns easy while greasing the rails for the contractor to go down the tube and go broke by focusing only on making the C.P.A’s job easier and not on increasing cash flow and profitable jobs

Change – The only people who want change are wet babies! Everyone else hates change!

Cheap – Not enough time or money to do it right first time; but plenty of time and money to do it over

Chaos – Always on the dollars coming in; never on the money going out

Client – Someone who buys construction services and is more concerned about quality than price

Comfort Zone – Success you have now since that is what you feel you deserve no more / no less

Company Bookkeeper – Expensive luxury　for construction companies that do not know about outsourcing

Completion Date – The point at which liquidated damages begin

Contractor Not A Banker – Student of Business Consulting And Accounting who has mastered the art of managing cash flow properly

Contractors – The people who makes civilization possible by building and maintaining structures

Contractor Gambling – One project away from making it big or going broke

Contractor Chaos – Contractor netting <$100K doing everything his way; especially the bookkeeping

Contractor Cheap – Amateur with customers from Hell and host of the game show “Low Price Leader”

Contractor Income – The average income of the six people they spend the most time with

Contractor Rich – BCA client earning $100K-$200K by building a client base to sell and service

Contractor Student – BCA client net <$100K learning how to get Rich then Wealthy

Contractor Successful – Contractor using timely accurate financial reports to base their decisions upon

Contractor Volume – Loses money on every sale and tries to make it up with a volume of new work

Contractor Wealthy – BCA Client earning $200K + Investing 50K with 100 clients to service

Construction Accountant – Someone who turns piles of numbers into meaningful trends

Construction Bookkeeping – System for setup and maintaining construction bookkeeping

Construction Bookkeeping And Accounting – System for setup and maintaining construction accounting

Construction Accounting – System that combines construction bookkeeping with Quarterly Tax preparation and payroll processing and presents the annual tax preparer with the information for them to prepare the annual income tax return. Construction accounting does not prepare annual tax returns as that is a profession and specialty of its own

Construction Bookkeeping And Accounting – System for setup and maintaining construction bookkeeping and accounting together in order to develop and maintain the　Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that when viewed daily and understood leads contractors to accumulate wealth

Construction Worker Thinking Patterns – Insights into the mind of a typical construction worker

Construction Worker Fully Burdened Labor Cost – Cost of having construction workers on your payroll

Critical Path Method – A management technique for losing your shirt under perfect control

Customer – Someone who buys construction services and is more concerned about price than quality

About The Author:

Randal DeHart, PMP, QPA The Construction Accountant. Randal DeHart, PMP, QPA is the co-founder of Business Consulting And Accounting in Lynnwood Washington and Fast Easy Accounting. He is the leading expert in outsourced construction bookkeeping and accounting services for small construction companies across the USA. He is experienced as a Contractor, Project Management Professional, Construction Accountant, Intuit ProAdvisor, QuickBooks For Contractors Expert and Xero Accounting Specialist and Bill.Com Certified Guru. Visit http://www.fasteasyaccounting.com/ to learn more. Follow Randal on Google+

This is a guest contribution from Randal DeHart of FastEasyAccounting.com.

I have been involved with construction beginning in the mid 1960’s as a kid working in the family construction company through the present time.

Over the decades I have gathered and documented a comprehensive list of terms that describe construction. Some of them are meant to bring a smile to your face, some are serious and the rest I hope are simply entertaining.

This Article Contains Definitions That Begin With The Letter “B”

Bad Bookkeeper – Wealth prevention tool keeping contractors from earning more than bookkeepers

Bad Bookkeeper Thinking Patterns -　Some of the reasons they do what they do to drive contractors crazy

Bad Bookkeeping – Saving money in the wrong place and making decisions on garbage reports

Bad Numbers – Lead to bad decisions / cash shrinks / business unstable / bankruptcy or failure

Banker Agreement – Pledge to yourself in front of a mirror “Bankers do not do construction and I do not loan money”. Then always get job deposits before any work begins and regular construction draws. Preferably every week.

Bankruptcy – Result of saving money on bookkeeping and making decisions on garbage reports

BCA Business Coach – Someone who helps you raise your level of thinking and income

BCA Staff Member – Cheerful, well paid, thinking, responsible adult, Mastermind Team member

BCG Matrix – Graphical representation of Cash Cows / Rising Stars / Question Marks / Dogs

Belly Button Accountability – The one person who is responsible for a deliverable on a construction project

Bid – A wild guess carried out to two decimal places

Bid Collector – Customer looking for cheap contractor

Bid Opening – A poker game in which the losing hand wins

Bilingual – Words for women because they enjoy reading and can easily form pictures and movies in their minds to understand concepts. Pictures for men because they are accustomed to looking at drawings and blueprints.

Black Box – Computer with construction accounting software operated by a trainee

Bookkeeper Fully Burdened Labor Costs – The total cost of having a bookkeeper in your office including the cost to fix mistakes, pay for training, drama and overhead

Bookkeeper Training Contractor – Bookkeepers, who train the boss to let them come in late, leave early, call friends and relatives, take long breaks, get paid more and do less and less.

BPM – Business Process Management for construction company owners to grow passive income streams

Budget Bookkeeping – Listing all deposits from the bank statement as sales income and leads to contractor paying too much in taxes.

Business Failure – No meaningful financial and project management records in the calendar quarter preceding the failure

Business Life Cycle – Start small / grow big / lose shirt / shrink back to small business

Business Plan – A plan to have accurate financial reports to base long and short term decisions on

Business Process Management – Develop a construction business that generates passive income

Business Roundtable – Little round table in tavern with pitcher of beer and four contractors strategizing

About The Author:

Randal DeHart, PMP, QPA The Construction Accountant. Randal DeHart, PMP, QPA is the co-founder of Business Consulting And Accounting in Lynnwood Washington and Fast Easy Accounting. He is the leading expert in outsourced construction bookkeeping and accounting services for small construction companies across the USA. He is experienced as a Contractor, Project Management Professional, Construction Accountant, Intuit ProAdvisor, QuickBooks For Contractors Expert and Xero Accounting Specialist and Bill.Com Certified Guru. Visit http://www.fasteasyaccounting.com/ to learn more. Follow Randal on Google+

This is a guest contribution from Randal DeHart of FastEasyAccounting.com.

I have been involved with construction beginning in the mid 1960’s as a kid working in the family construction company through the present time.

Over the decades I have gathered and documented a comprehensive list of terms that describe construction. Some of them are meant to bring a smile to your face, some are serious and the rest I hope are simply entertaining.

This Article Contains Definitions That Begin With The Letter “A”

80/20 Rule 80% of a contractor’s wealth and well-being comes from 20% of their clients and their daily activities.

24 Hour Bookkeeper also known as a scanner connected to our paperless server; sits in your office quietly, no watering, no feeding, always ready to perform 24-7, never wastes company time surfing the web or chatting or texting on their cell phone.

Apprentice Communication is what happens when apprentices point at something while making deep noises from their chest sound like important messages from their brain all in a feeble attempt to hide the fact they know nothing at all, about anything.

Aggravation Box is a desktop, notebook or tablet computer with construction accounting software operated by a trainee with no clue about accounting let alone construction accounting.

Auction the sad and yet inevitable end of a promising construction company where the upper management and/or owner spent time working in the business, focusing on the wrong stuff and relying on bad financial and job costing reports due to incompetent bookkeeping.

Auditor is the person who goes in after the war is lost, the contractor is bankrupt and bayonets any hope of recovery.

Assets of Construction Company are as follows: Cash, Receivables, Trucks, Tools, Equipment and Material.

Assets of Construction Firm are cash, Business Process, Sales Process, Client List and Predictable Cash Flow. (There is a lot of information if you understand the differences between a company and a firm.)

Please feel free to share them with anyone and especially contractors who need a bit of humor and homespun wisdom and perhaps they will find value.

About The Author:

Randal DeHart, PMP, QPA The Construction Accountant. Randal DeHart, PMP, QPA is the co-founder of Business Consulting And Accounting in Lynnwood Washington and Fast Easy Accounting. He is the leading expert in outsourced construction bookkeeping and accounting services for small construction companies across the USA. He is experienced as a Contractor, Project Management Professional, Construction Accountant, Intuit ProAdvisor, QuickBooks For Contractors Expert and Xero Accounting Specialist and Bill.Com Certified Guru. Visit http://www.fasteasyaccounting.com/ to learn more. Follow Randal on Google+

Sometimes, even my wife and I get duped into hiring a contractor who turns out to be less than professional.  It happened to us just a few weeks ago.  There was a very large, dead, pine tree in our front yard that needed to be cut down.  Every tree service in town had either left a business card on the door or tracked me down in the yard with a spur-of-the-moment estimate.  For whatever reason I kept putting it off.

I guess my wife was tired of the procrastination.  She went ahead and just hired somebody one day while I was away doing my thing for somebody else.  I think she was mildly impressed by his hustle and persistence as he had been working the whole street all day.  By the third time he came around to bang on our door his price had dropped by a hundred bucks and she jumped at a deal.  The next thing I knew I was getting a text message: “the tree is coming down”.

The service was performed without major problems, but then the weirdness began.  First there was a somewhat intimidating request for refreshments from the owner.  What’s more, her offer of ice water wasn’t good enough for his crew.  They needed something with “flavor”.  Reluctantly, she whipped up some lemonade and brought it to them in the yard.  Mind you, she was home alone with two toddlers in the house who were going bonkers throughout.

Then, when they had finished up, the owner went to the door to ask not only for payment but also for a tip.  A TIP!  Servers should expect to be tipped.  Taxi drivers should expect to be tipped.  CONTRACTORS SHOULD NOT EXPECT TO BE TIPPED.  If you do a knock-out job on a project and the homeowner wants to throw you a few extra bones then wonderful.  But, it shouldn’t be expected.  And you certainly shouldn’t ask for one!  So unprofessional.  When I arrived that evening I found my front yard to be in disarray, and their red solo cups strewn all over the yard like trash.

All Hustle And No Class Will Make Tree Guy A Poor Boy

On some level I have to respect the hustle and the drive of this guy.  He wasn’t sitting and waiting for the phone to ring.  He was working my neighborhood like his life depended on it: banging on doors, running all over giving estimates, and just generally harassing the hell out of people until they agreed to hire him.  He had no fear, which can be a helpful instinct for service providers who want to be successful.

BUT…hustle and audacity have to be balanced by class and professionalism.  Just to break this lesson down:

1. Don’t ask for refreshments.  It’s not that hard to fill a cooler with ice and gatorade every morning before you leave home.
2. Don’t ask for a tip.  It makes you look like an amateurish tool and it’s just kind of rude and weird.  If somebody wants to offer you an unsolicited tip then great, but I think you’ll find that this is a rare occurrence.  It’s better to just price your jobs appropriately in the beginning.  Don’t low-ball and then hope to make up for it with a big tip at the end because this just isn’t going to happen.
3. Clean up after yourself.  When you are done and gone it should look like YOU WERE NEVER THERE.  The homeowner doesn’t want to see ant-covered solo cups all over the flipping yard after you’re gone.

At the end of the day, tree guy performed his service and he got some money out of my pocket.  But I will never hire him again.  It’s a shame…I have a few more trees that are starting to go and will need removal in the next year or two.  It’s thousands of dollars worth of work.  Had he been more of a pro I likely would have brought him back.  But, I don’t let people make a fool of me more than once.