Bookkeeping for
Painting
Contractors.
Deposits come in before the first coat, paint goes on the store account a few gallons at a time, and much of your crew may be subcontractors. Spring is slammed and winter is thin. We sort costs by job so you can see which bids made money, and we track sub payments all year.
Flat monthly pricing · Cancel anytime · Dedicated bookkeeper
Residential, Commercial
or Just You
A residential repaint, a commercial repaint and a new build bid all carry different deposits, timelines and risks. We set up your books around the work you actually take on.
Residential Painters
Interior and exterior repaints for homeowners. Jobs are short, deposits are common, and most of the cost is labor. The real question is whether your estimates cover the hours your crew actually spends.
- Deposits held until the job is done
- Interior and exterior revenue split
- Paint and sundries coded per job
- Crew hours vs. estimate
- Card and online payments matched
Commercial Painters
Offices, retail, multifamily and new construction for GCs and property managers. Longer jobs, progress billing, slower pay and more equipment, with lifts, sprayers and scaffolding often rented by the week.
- Progress billing and retainage tracked
- Lift and scaffold rentals coded to jobs
- Materials by job and by phase
- Open balances by GC or property manager
- Change orders billed and tracked
Owner-Operators & Small Crews
You paint, bid, collect and do the books at night. Everything runs through one account, sometimes one card. We separate business from personal and set up books that hold up as you add crews.
- Business and personal spending separated
- Mileage and vehicle costs categorized
- Sub payments tracked from day one
- A simple monthly P&L you can read
- Books ready for your CPA at year end
The Financial Headaches
We Fix
Painting looks simple from the outside. The money side gets tangled in a few predictable places.
Paint store charges with no job name
The store account gets charged all month across every job, and the statement mostly shows ticket numbers. Without a job name on each ticket, materials pile up as one expense and job costing turns into guesswork. We code each ticket to its job and reconcile the statement.
Subs paid all year, no W-9 on file
Sub crews get paid weekly by check or app, and nobody asks for a W-9 until January. For payments made from 2026, a sub you pay $2,000 or more in a year generally needs a 1099-NEC. We track every sub payment as it happens so year-end totals are ready.
Deposits spent before the job starts
A deposit feels like income, but the work hasn't happened yet. When spring deposits get spent on last month's bills, a slow stretch can leave you short to finish jobs. We record deposits as work you still owe until the job is done, so your real cash position is clear.
Slow months that eat busy-season profit
Exterior work drops off when the weather turns, and in many markets so does demand. If you only look at the year total, you miss how thin the off-season gets. Monthly P&Ls side by side show how much the slow months cost and how much the busy months need to cover.
Every Month
Everything You Need,
Nothing You Don't
Our services are set up around how painting contractors run: deposits up front, paint store accounts, sub crews, rented lifts, and a busy season that carries the slow one. We work in QuickBooks Online and connect to your job software or work from its reports.
Monthly Bookkeeping
Every account reconciled, every transaction categorized, every month. You get a clean P&L and balance sheet you can read and use to make decisions.
See Full Details →Financial Reporting
A P&L by month and season, profit on each job compared with what you bid, and a split between residential and commercial work so you can see which pays better.
See Full Details →Bank Reconciliation
Every business account and credit card matched and verified each month. No mystery charges. No unresolved transactions. No surprises.
See Full Details →Accounts Payable & Receivable
We code paint store and rental bills to jobs, track customer deposits and balances due, and keep commercial progress billing and retainage organized by GC or property manager.
See Full Details →Catch-Up Bookkeeping
Months or years behind? We clean it all up before monthly service starts, at a flat price per month behind that we quote up front.
See Full Details →Payroll Support
Payroll runs through Gusto, which files the payroll taxes, W-2s and 1099s. We reconcile every run and keep employee crews and sub crews separate, with labor coded by job.
See Full Details →"Dan is crucial to the financial management of my business. I am a busy guy that started a side hustle and it took off. It became too tedious for me to manage bookkeeping, and I decided to outsource that service to create time to focus on my operations, customers, and services."
Painters
FAQ
Questions we hear from painters before they sign on with Tides.
Based in Greenville, SC —
Serving Clients Nationwide
100% remote bookkeeping for small businesses across South Carolina and throughout the United States.
Beyond Painters,
We Serve All These Businesses
Tides Bookkeeping specializes in bookkeeping across 12 distinct industries. Industry-specific expertise means fewer errors, better categorization, and a bookkeeper who already understands how your business makes money.
Finance terms worth knowing
Plain-English explainers, no jargon.
Run the Crews.
We'll Handle
The Books.
Schedule a free 15-minute call. We'll review your current setup, answer your questions, and give you a flat monthly quote — no pressure.
No credit card required · No long-term contracts · Cancel anytime
Simple, Flat-Rate Pricing
Flat monthly plans scaled to your business — no hourly billing and no surprise invoices. You always know the price up front.
★★★★★ 5.0 · 8 client reviews on Intuit's ProAdvisor directory
✔ Reviewed by Daniel Cope, Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor · Updated August 2026