You own an excavating company. Work is steady, crews are busy, and the office is a mess: timesheets on paper, invoices sent late, equipment hours in one spreadsheet, job costs in another, lien waivers in an inbox, and a spouse or one office manager holding it all together at night. You want to know what back-office setup other contractors use and whether any of it should be outsourced.
The practical answer: most small and mid-sized excavation contractors need three things before anything else: construction-aware accounting with job costing, digital time and equipment tracking from the field, and a simple document system for bids, change orders, lien waivers and compliance paperwork. Once those are in place, routine tasks such as data entry, invoicing, accounts payable, payroll preparation and document chasing are good candidates for part-time or outsourced support, while estimating, pricing and customer relationships stay with the owner.
What the back office of an excavating business actually covers
- Job costing: labour, equipment hours, fuel, materials, trucking and subcontractors by job
- Time tracking: crew hours by job and task, including travel and overtime
- Equipment: hours, maintenance schedules, repairs and cost per hour
- Billing: progress billing, time-and-materials invoices, retainage, change orders
- Payables: supplier invoices, subcontractor payments, lien waivers
- Payroll: multiple rates, union or prevailing wage requirements
- Compliance documents: insurance certificates, safety records, permits
Certified payroll deserves special attention
If you work on federally funded projects covered by the Davis-Bacon and related Acts, the US Department of Labor requires contractors to submit certified payrolls weekly, and provides the optional form WH-347 for doing so. Prevailing wage rules on state and local projects vary. Mistakes here can delay payment or create liability, so this is a task where a trained person and good software pay off.
A setup that works for many contractors
| Need | What to use | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| Accounting and job costing | Accounting software with job costing, or construction accounting software | Bookkeeper, reviewed monthly by owner and accountant |
| Field time and equipment hours | Mobile time tracking app tied to jobs and cost codes | Foremen enter daily; office reviews weekly |
| Estimating and bids | Estimating software or disciplined templates | Owner or estimator |
| Invoicing and collections | Invoices generated from job data; follow-up schedule | Office or outsourced back office |
| Documents and compliance | Shared cloud folders by job with naming rules | Office or outsourced back office |
What to outsource and what to keep
Good to outsource: entering supplier invoices, reconciling bank and credit card statements, preparing invoices from approved job data, chasing lien waivers and insurance certificates, maintaining equipment logs, preparing payroll data for review, and producing weekly job cost reports.
Keep in-house: estimating and pricing, approving payments, customer negotiations, change order decisions, safety responsibility and hiring.
Fix the field data first
The office can only be as good as the information from the field. If crews write hours on paper at the end of the week, job costs will always be late and wrong. Start by getting foremen to record time and equipment hours daily against job codes. Even a simple app makes every downstream task faster.
A hypothetical example: an excavating contractor with 25 employees moves crews to mobile time tracking, sets up job costing in its accounting software, and uses a remote back-office assistant to enter supplier bills, prepare invoices each Friday and chase lien waivers. Invoices go out within days of work completing, and the owner finally sees which job types actually make money.
If you are deciding whether to hire a bookkeeper or use a service, see online bookkeeping service or local bookkeeper, and for keeping the month-end tidy, how to outsource month-end close without losing control.
An office that keeps up with your crews
A contractor’s back office works when field data flows in daily and routine paperwork does not wait for the owner’s evenings. AB7 Solutions provides remote back-office and bookkeeping support for construction and field service businesses, including job cost reporting, accounts payable and receivable, invoicing, document and compliance tracking, and payroll preparation support, plus workflow automation to connect field apps and accounting software. If your business needs a local bookkeeper who visits the yard, we will tell you that.
Tell us how many crews you run, which software you use today and where paperwork piles up, and we will suggest a practical setup.
Email: ab@ab7solutions.com | director@ab7solutions.com
Phone: +91 9878067778 | +1 321 341 7733
Website: www.ab7solutions.com
Sources: US Department of Labor, Certified payroll (WH-347) for Davis-Bacon and related Acts.