Who Highpoint works with
We work with owner-led construction companies in Chicagoland that are big enough to have real job-costing problems and small enough that the owner is still the one carrying them.
The contractor we are built for
Most of our clients are former tradespeople who now run the company. You started with a truck and a reputation. Now you have crews, project managers, subs, several jobs running at once, and a set of financial questions nobody trained you for. You can tell the business is growing. You cannot always tell which jobs are actually making money.
That is the point where a bookkeeper stops being enough and a once-a-year tax preparer stops being useful.
- Owner-led residential or light-commercial construction companies
- General contractors and primary trades
- $500,000 to $20 million in annual revenue
- 10 to 50 employees, with multiple crews and concurrent jobs
- Based in Chicagoland, with clients served nationally through cloud tools
- On QuickBooks®, or willing to move onto it
Trades we speak
We know how the money moves in these businesses, from estimate to change order to closeout.
General contracting
HVAC
Plumbing
Electrical
Roofing
Framing
Concrete
Drywall
Painting
Finish carpentry
Cabinetry
Landscaping
If your trade is not on this list but your work runs on jobs, crews and change orders,
the accounting problems are the same ones. Ask us.
What is usually going on when contractors call
You cannot see job profitability
The profit and loss says the year is fine. It cannot tell you which of the eleven jobs you ran paid for the two that did not. Without job costing and WIP, every bid starts with a guess. Catching that leakage early is typically worth 2 to 5 percent of margin recovery per job.
Change orders are leaking margin
Work gets approved in the field, gets built, and never makes it onto an invoice. By the time anyone notices, the job is closed out and the margin is gone.
Cash flow does not match the backlog
You are busy and still watching the account. Retainage, progress billing and slow receivables put your cash in someone else’s hands while payroll stays on your calendar.
The insurance audit is a scramble
Certificates of insurance, subcontractor documentation and payroll records get assembled the week the auditor asks for them. Where documentation gaps have been the problem, closing them can mean 20 percent or more in premium savings.
Nobody owns the whole picture
A bookkeeper who cannot file the return. A CPA who surfaces in March. An advisor who has never seen a WIP schedule. You are the only one holding all three, and it is not your job.
You are a good fit for Highpoint if
- You want one accountable team for bookkeeping, tax and advisory instead of three vendors who do not talk to each other
- You want to know job-level margin while the job is still open, not after closeout, and you would act on a 2 to 5 percent recovery if we found it
- You are willing to run the business on QuickBooks® and let us set the reporting up properly
- You want your books cleaned up without being made to feel bad about how they got there
- You are thinking about the next three to five years, not just the next filing deadline
- You will give straight answers and expect the same back
When another firm may serve you better
We would rather be straight with you early than three months in. A few situations are usually a better match somewhere else, at least for now.
- You need a single tax return filed this year and nothing beyond it. That is real work, and a seasonal preparer will do it for less than we would charge.
- You are shopping mainly on monthly price. Our value shows up in job-level margin and audit readiness, and that takes more hours than the cheapest bookkeeping option.
- You are not ready to move onto QuickBooks®. Our reporting is built on it, so the timing has to work for you first.
- You want your receivables chased. We will show you exactly where the cash is stuck and how to tighten your billing, though we do not make collection calls.
- You need prior filings we did not prepare defended as our own work. We are glad to review them and take things forward from there.
If one of those describes you today, bring it up on the call anyway. Some of these change in a year, and if we are still not the right firm, we will point you to someone who is.
Not a contractor, but the numbers still feel like a second job?
Construction is where we go deepest, and it is where most of our clients come from. It is not the only place the work applies. Owner-led businesses that run on projects, crews, equipment and progress billing hit the same problems: job-level blindness, cash flow that lags the backlog, and compliance documentation nobody has time to keep current. Specialty trades, service and installation companies, equipment-heavy operators and project-based professional firms all sit close enough that the Blueprint holds.
We also work with a small number of established clients outside construction who came to us through referral and stayed
Who sends us work
A large share of our clients arrive through people who see contractors’ financial problems before we do.
If you are one of them, you should know what we take on.
Bankers and lenders
You need borrower financials you can rely on and a WIP schedule that holds up. Clean, timely reporting supports the credit decision instead of complicating it, and can help a contractor earn better terms than unaudited books would.
Insurance brokers and agents
Your contractor client’s audit outcome depends on documentation they do not keep well. We build the payroll, COI and subcontractor records before the auditor asks.
Attorneys and construction software partners
Entity questions, succession planning and system implementations all land better on clean books. We are the firm that gets them clean and keeps them that way.
Three steps to find out if this works
Step 1
A 30-minute consultation
You tell us how the business runs and what is going wrong. We tell you what we see. No pitch deck.
Step 2
A look at your numbers
We review your books, your job structure and your documentation, then show you the gaps in plain English.
Step 3
A written Blueprint and a fixed fee
You get a scope, a schedule and a price before anything starts. If it is not worth it, do not do it.
Highpoint is a Schaumburg-based CPA and advisory firm serving owner-led construction companies across Chicagoland. Illinois-licensed CPA leadership, Advanced QuickBooks® ProAdvisor expertise, Chicago Chapter. You can expect an answer to your questions within 24 to 48 hours.