Construction CFO Services in Las Vegas
Fractional CFO and Controller support for Las Vegas contractors: WIP schedules, job costing, retainage, bonding capacity and cash flow across draws.
Construction Finance in Southern Nevada
Las Vegas contractors win work on the strength of their financial statements.
A contractor in the Las Vegas Valley answers to three readers besides the owner: the surety that sets the bonding line, the bank that sets the credit line, and the Nevada State Contractors Board, which sets the license monetary limit from the financial statements you submit. All three read the same numbers. When the WIP schedule is late or the job costs are guesses, every one of them notices.
Vessel Advisors serves Southern Nevada contractors from our Las Vegas office in Summerlin: general contractors, specialty trades and the family groups that hold the yard, the equipment and the real estate in separate entities. Our CFOs and Controllers have run finance inside construction businesses, so the WIP schedule, the surety package and the job-cost report are familiar ground.
The full scope of the practice is on our construction contractors page. For the office itself and the other industries we serve across the Mountain West, see Fractional CFO Services in Las Vegas.
Where the Margin Goes
Eight finance problems decide whether a Las Vegas contractor grows profitably.
Each one starts as an accounting detail and ends as a cash, bonding or margin problem. Here is what each looks like on the books, and what our fractional CFO and Controller team does about it.
The WIP schedule
The work-in-progress schedule is the one report that lines up every open job against contract value, cost to date, estimated cost to complete and billings. In a lot of contractors it gets assembled once a quarter, when the surety asks for it, and it does not tie to the general ledger.
What we do: Our Controller rebuilds it every month, ties it to the books and walks ownership through the estimate to complete on each job, because that estimate moves every other number on the schedule.
Percentage-of-completion revenue
Under ASC 606, revenue on a construction contract that meets the over-time criteria is recognized as the work progresses, and contractors commonly measure that progress with a cost-to-cost input method. The method is only as reliable as the estimated total cost behind it. A stale estimate shifts revenue and gross profit into the wrong month.
What we do: We put the cost-to-complete estimates on a monthly review with the project managers, so recognized revenue reflects each job as it stands today.
Over- and under-billings
Billings ahead of earned revenue are an over-billing: cash collected for work you still owe. Earned revenue ahead of billings is an under-billing: work performed and not yet invoiced. Persistent under-billings point to estimating trouble or late pay applications, and heavy over-billings can make the bank balance look stronger than the business is.
What we do: We reconcile both to the WIP schedule every month and trace each under-billing back to the pay application or the estimate that caused it.
Job costing by phase
A job that makes money in total can lose it in one phase: sitework, concrete, framing, electrical rough-in. When the cost codes in the accounting system do not match the way the job was estimated, nobody sees the overrun until the job closes.
What we do: We align the cost-code structure with how you estimate, so estimated and actual cost compare line by line and the next bid prices the phase that went wrong.
Retainage
Retainage is earned money the owner or general contractor holds back until the contract’s release terms are met, often at or after substantial completion. Across a full backlog it becomes working capital you cannot spend. A general contractor carries it on both sides: retainage receivable from owners and retainage payable to subcontractors.
What we do: We track retainage by job and by release condition, age it like any other receivable, and put expected release dates into the cash forecast.
Bonding capacity and the surety relationship
An underwriter sets bonding capacity by reading your financial statements, WIP schedule and backlog, with working capital and equity carrying most of the weight. A statement that arrives late, or needs a page of explanation, costs capacity the business could have had.
What we do: Our CFO owns the finance side of the surety relationship: a clean year-end statement, a WIP package the agent can underwrite from, and a conversation with the agent before you bid the job that stretches the line.
Cash flow across draws
Construction cash moves on someone else’s calendar. Pay applications, lender inspections on draw-funded projects, lien-waiver exchanges and general contractor approvals all sit between the work and the deposit. Payroll and material invoices wait for none of them.
What we do: We build a rolling thirteen-week cash forecast from the actual pay-application calendar, retainage included, so a shortfall shows up weeks ahead of payroll day.
Equipment
Equipment is either a job cost or an overhead drag, depending on whether its hours are charged to jobs. Owned machines that sit in the yard still cost money, and buy, lease or rent decisions made on feel tie up working capital the surety is watching.
What we do: We set internal equipment rates, charge hours to jobs, and run the buy, lease or rent analysis against utilization and cash before the purchase, with your CPA handling the tax side.
Nevada Licensing
Nevada ties your contractor license limit to the financial statements you can produce.
The Nevada State Contractors Board sets a monetary limit on every license: the maximum contract a licensee may undertake on one or more construction contracts on a single construction site or subdivision site for a single client. The financial statement the Board asks for rises with that limit.
- Above $25,000, the statement has to come from an independent CPA.
- From $500,000 up to $1,000,000, a compiled statement needs full disclosures, or the statement can be reviewed or audited.
- At $1,000,000 or more, the statement must be reviewed or audited by an independent CPA and current within one year of the application.
- Every request to raise the limit requires a financial statement, whatever amount is requested. A single-project limit increase is available for one job above the standard limit.
- The license bond ranges from $1,000 to $500,000, based on the license type, the monetary limit, financial responsibility, experience and character.
In practice, the size of job a Nevada contractor can sign is capped by how quickly and how cleanly the books can support a CPA review. We keep the general ledger, the WIP schedule and the balance sheet review-ready all year, so the review or audit starts from reconciled numbers and a limit increase can be filed when the bid calls for it.
Thresholds are from the Board’s published licensing requirements. Confirm the current rules with the NSCB before you file.
Where It Starts
The work starts with the Financial Discovery Assessment.
Before we recommend a CFO, a Controller or both, we run the Financial Discovery Assessment. For a contractor, that means testing whether the job-cost system and the general ledger agree, how the WIP schedule and the pay applications actually get built each month, and whether the accounting team has the construction depth the surety package demands.
A defined diagnostic across three dimensions
Accounting systems and technology; processes and procedures; and team members and team structure, including a will-skill analysis of the people doing the work.
Findings delivered as the Financial Heat Map System
Dollarized findings and a sequenced plan, showing where the finance function is costing money, carrying risk or holding back the next bonded job.
Reviewed at the Executive Action Meeting
Ownership and leadership walk through the findings and recommendations, including the CFO and Controller team the business needs to carry them out.
Construction Case Studies
Three contractors show what happens when the books fall behind the field.
Published case studies from our construction practice. Each one began with the Financial Discovery Assessment.
Built to $110M. The Finance Function Never Got the Memo.
A multi-generational commercial contractor reached nine figures on manual AP, manual time tracking and a slow close. Its bonding agents and lenders were reading statements that described the company it used to be.
Revenue Tripled in Twelve Months. The Back Office Didn't.
An underground utility and civil contractor tripled revenue in a single year. The crews scaled with it. AP, payroll, bank reconciliations and the insurance program stayed sized for the smaller business.
The Field Was Ready. The Books Weren't.
A commercial electrical contractor had the crews and the pipeline for larger work. The bonding line held it back, because the financial statements behind it had drifted away from the business.
More from the construction practice: The WIP Schedule Tells the Truth — Are You Reading It? and For Construction Owners: Cleaner WIP and Larger Bonded Work.
Las Vegas Office
Tell us where the numbers stop keeping up with the work.
Share how many jobs you run, the accounting software behind them and what your surety or bank is asking for. A member of our construction team will follow up.
Vessel Advisors — Las Vegas
10845 Griffith Peak Drive, Suite 200
Las Vegas, NV 89135
866-324-4473
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Common Questions
These answers cover the construction finance questions owners raise most.
What does a construction CFO do that a general CFO does not?
A construction CFO manages the reports that set a contractor’s capacity to take on work: the WIP schedule, percentage-of-completion revenue, over- and under-billings, job-cost variance and the financial package the surety underwrites from. On a contractor’s books the P&L depends on the estimated cost to complete every open job, so the CFO has to manage those estimates as closely as the ledger.
How does the NSCB monetary limit relate to my financial statements?
The Nevada State Contractors Board sets a monetary limit on each license: the maximum contract a licensee may undertake on a single construction site or subdivision site for a single client. The financial statement the Board requires rises with the limit, and at $1,000,000 or more it must be reviewed or audited by an independent CPA and current within one year of the application. Books that are reconciled all year shorten that review and keep a limit increase within reach when a larger bid comes along.
What are over-billings and under-billings?
They are the gap between what you have billed on a job and the revenue you have earned on it. Billings ahead of earned revenue are an over-billing, presented as a contract liability under ASC 606. Earned revenue ahead of billings is an under-billing, presented as a contract asset. Both come straight off the WIP schedule, and sureties and lenders read them as a test of estimating and billing discipline.
Why does our surety care so much about the WIP schedule?
The balance sheet shows where the business stood on one day. The WIP schedule shows the gross profit still to be earned in backlog, the jobs whose margins are fading and whether billings are keeping pace with the work. That forward view is why sureties ask for it alongside the financial statements when they set or raise a bonding line.
Do we need a fractional CFO, a fractional Controller, or both?
A Controller owns the monthly close, the job-cost reports and the WIP schedule. A CFO uses those numbers for bonding strategy, bank relationships, bid pricing and growth decisions. Many contractors between the owner-run stage and a full-time finance department need both, and the Financial Discovery Assessment is how that decision gets made.
Our Proprietary Diagnostic
The Financial Discovery Assessment shows you what’s working, what’s missing, and the plan to get where the business needs to go.
Every Assessment applies the same structured examination — accounting systems and technology, processes and procedures, team members and team structure, and team-member will-skill — refined across hundreds of engagements in businesses that look like yours.
The output is the Financial Heat Map System: dollarized findings, hidden inefficiencies, and a sequenced plan. It’s presented at the Executive Action Meeting, where your stakeholders review findings and recommendations in non-clinical, non-technical language they can act on.
We’ve walked into hundreds of businesses at the stage yours is in now. We know where to look. We know how to fix what we find.