Rolling up divisions in spreadsheets every month
Use one job list and one cost structure for every division.
A contractor with several divisions often has each one close its own books or keep its own job cost sheet. Someone in finance then pastes them into a master spreadsheet in the middle of the month, and the formulas fail the first time a division adds a code. The roll up takes days, the numbers are old when the CFO sees them, and the team isn't sure the pieces tie to the books. Worse, each division reports gross margin its own way, so comparing them means arguing about definitions. A roll up should be a report that updates, not a project that starts over every month.
Three moves, in order
What CFOS does about it
CFOS works on top of QuickBooks Online and reads jobs, cost codes, vendors, bills, and invoices, so job cost by cost code updates every hour from the same books. It has seven cost types and three levels of cost code, and every job follows that structure. The monthly WIP schedule has cost to complete entered by each PM and approved, with over and under billing, and a master WIP puts the open jobs on one page. One login rolling up several companies into one report isn't live yet, so this fits divisions inside one QuickBooks company.
Who owns this: CFO.
At $30M, you might have three divisions in one QuickBooks company. A roll up that ties to the books and updates each hour replaces several days of month end pasting. The CFO reads it on the first day, not the tenth.
We email you when CFOS for QuickBooks opens, plus a few updates before then. Your address stays with Run On CFOS. One click unsubscribes.
30 days free, a 90-day money-back guarantee, and cancel anytime. It opens January 2027. We email you the day it opens.
Step 07: Monthly cadence
Weekly bookkeeping, cost to complete, and one CEO report, on the same days every month.
Other problems step 07 solves
Other things that go wrong
What owners ask
Roll up job cost across divisions?
Use one job list and one cost structure for every division. A contractor with several divisions often has each one close its own books or keep its own job cost sheet. Someone in finance then pastes them into a master spreadsheet in the middle of the month, and the formulas fail the first time a division adds a code. The roll up takes days, the numbers are old when the CFO sees them, and the team isn't sure the pieces tie to the books. Worse, each division reports gross margin its own way, so comparing them means arguing about definitions. A roll up should be a report that updates, not a project that starts over every month.
Which part of the system fixes this?
The step is number 07, monthly cadence. Weekly bookkeeping, cost to complete, and one CEO report, on the same days every month. It's drawn from chapter 7 of CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System.
Is this normal for my trade?
Across the 48 trades that publish a figure, net profit at $1M to $5M averages 7% before taxes. If you're well under that and this page describes your month, the two are usually the same story. The published average tells you where the pack is, and your own job costing tells you where you are, which is the number that pays payroll.
Where do I start?
Compare the cost codes and cost types each division uses, then choose one structure with the same three levels and the same cost types for all of them.
Does CFOS roll up separate companies into one report?
Not yet. One login rolling up several companies into one report isn't live. Divisions inside a single QuickBooks Online company work today, and the master WIP covers all of the open jobs in it.
How do I standardize cost codes without rebuilding every job?
Map each division's old codes to the new structure and use the new codes on new jobs. Open jobs can keep their codes until they close, with the map used for the roll up. It's slower than a clean cutover, but it doesn't disturb jobs in progress.
What should the roll up tie to?
It should tie to the general ledger in QuickBooks Online, job by job and in total. If the roll up and the books disagree, the books win. The difference is a posting or coding problem to fix before anyone reads the report.
Can I fix this without touching anything else?
You can try, and it doesn't hold. Step 07 depends on step 03, overhead calculation and step 04, estimating system and step 05, software and bookkeeping alignment and step 06, project management. Install it ahead of those and it produces numbers the field won't trust, which is worse than the problem you started with.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.