Adam Traywick, LLC - Certified Public Accountant

Adam Traywick, LLC - Certified Public Accountant Fort Worth CPA providing tax, accounting, and payroll services. Focusing on small businesses and individuals. Call Today! 817.381.5520

There are four months left in the year. Most of what fixes an S-corp return has to happen before December 31, not when y...
09/01/2026

There are four months left in the year. Most of what fixes an S-corp return has to happen before December 31, not when you file.

That's the part that catches people. The return gets prepared in the spring, but almost every lever moved months earlier, and by then it's a records problem instead of a planning one.

Payroll is the big one. If the business income comes from your own work, the IRS expects reasonable compensation to run through payroll as wages before anything comes out as a distribution. A W-2 you meant to run and didn't isn't something your accountant can fix in March.

The rest is unglamorous. Distributions recorded as distributions. Personal charges cleaned out of the business account. Loans to and from the company documented as loans. Books reconciled through the current month, not started in January.

Let's look at an example. An owner who takes money out all year without running payroll has a tidy bank account and a real problem. Same dollars, wrong treatment.

August is when this is cheap to fix. December is when it's expensive, and March is when it turns into a conversation about amendments.

Full checklist: https://adamtraywick.com/s-corp-year-end-checklist-fort-worth/

"Are we doing okay?" is a hard question to answer without a benchmark, and most HVAC owners are answering it by looking ...
08/27/2026

"Are we doing okay?" is a hard question to answer without a benchmark, and most HVAC owners are answering it by looking at their bank balance.

The bank balance is a bad scoreboard. It moves with deposit timing, financed equipment, and whatever you took out last month. It tells you about cash, not about whether the business works.

Net margin is the honest number, and it's the one most owners can't state off the top of their head. Once you can, a lot of decisions get simpler. Whether to add a truck. Whether the maintenance agreement program is carrying its weight. Whether the install side is quietly subsidizing service.

Let's look at an example. Two shops book the same revenue. One is heavier on service and maintenance agreements, the other on new construction installs. Their margins won't be close, and holding them to the same benchmark tells you nothing useful.

So the benchmark that matters is your own, tracked over time and split by revenue type. Industry averages are a starting point, not a verdict.

If you can't say what your margin was last quarter, that's the first thing to fix.

Full breakdown: https://adamtraywick.com/how-profitable-should-an-hvac-business-be/

Calling someone a 1099 doesn't make them one. The IRS looks at how you actually work together, not at what the paperwork...
08/25/2026

Calling someone a 1099 doesn't make them one. The IRS looks at how you actually work together, not at what the paperwork says.

August is when a lot of trades shops start adding help, and the classification question comes up fast. The work is there, a full-time hire feels like too much, and a contractor arrangement looks like the flexible answer.

Sometimes it is. The test is control, and the IRS runs it in three categories. Behavioral control, meaning who decides how the work gets done. Financial control, meaning who carries the tools, the truck, and the unreimbursed costs. And the type of relationship, meaning whether this is ongoing work that's core to your business.

No single factor decides it, and a signed contract doesn't settle it either.

Let's look at an example. Someone who runs your calls, in your branded truck, on your schedule, with your parts, every week, is an employee. The contract stapled to that arrangement is just a piece of paper.

Real alternatives to a full-time hire do exist. Subcontracting to another licensed shop, seasonal W-2 help, and part-time hires all hold up when they're structured honestly.

Get it wrong and the correction comes with back payroll tax, depending on your situation.

Full breakdown: https://adamtraywick.com/the-best-alternatives-to-full-time-employees-in-2026/

Tax software answers the questions you ask it. It has no opinion about the ones you didn't.That's the whole difference, ...
08/20/2026

Tax software answers the questions you ask it. It has no opinion about the ones you didn't.

That's the whole difference, and it isn't a knock on the software. For a straightforward return it's fine, and it's cheaper. The gap shows up when your situation has moving parts the interview flow never asks about.

Let's look at an example. An HVAC owner hires their first W-2 tech in October. The software will handle the payroll numbers you type into it. It won't ask whether adding that person changes what your entity structure should be, or what it means for how you pay yourself next year.

Software is a filing tool. It's accurate about what you feed it and silent about everything else.

The other thing it can't do is talk to you in June. Most of what actually moves a tax bill gets decided during the year, not in April when the numbers are already set. By the time you're typing figures into a filing tool, the decisions that mattered are behind you.

If your return is a W-2 and a standard deduction, keep the software. If you're running crews, buying equipment, and making structure decisions, you're paying for the wrong tool.

Full comparison: https://adamtraywick.com/cpa-vs-tax-software/

Your dispatch board and your books disagree, and the dispatch board is usually right.Most HVAC shops end up with two sys...
08/18/2026

Your dispatch board and your books disagree, and the dispatch board is usually right.

Most HVAC shops end up with two systems that don't talk. The field software knows what happened: who went where, what parts came off the truck, what the customer actually paid. The accounting file knows what got invoiced. The gap between them is where margin goes missing.

Let's look at an example. A tech swaps a capacitor under warranty and logs it in the field app. Nobody codes it in the books, so the part lands in general material cost with no job attached. Do that 40 times a quarter and your warranty work looks free while your install margin looks worse than it is.

The software choice matters less than whether it pushes clean data into your accounting file. A tool that dispatches beautifully and exports garbage will cost you more than the subscription saves.

Three questions before you buy anything. Does it map to your chart of accounts? Does it carry job codes through to the invoice? Can your bookkeeper reconcile it without a spreadsheet in the middle?

If the answer to any of those is no, the tool is a scheduling app, not an accounting system.

Full breakdown: https://adamtraywick.com/field-service-software-for-hvac-companies-accounting-job-costing-dispatch/

$60,000 is the number everyone repeats about S-corp elections. It's a rule of thumb somebody made up, not a rule.The IRS...
08/13/2026

$60,000 is the number everyone repeats about S-corp elections. It's a rule of thumb somebody made up, not a rule.

The IRS doesn't publish an income threshold that makes an S-corp election required or correct. What it publishes is a standard: if the business income comes from your personal work, that money has to run through payroll as reasonable compensation before anything comes out as a distribution.

So the real question isn't whether you cleared some number last year. It's whether your profit is meaningfully bigger than what you'd have to pay yourself to do your own job.

Let's look at an example. Two HVAC owners net the same amount. One runs three crews and spends most of the week quoting and managing. The other is on the tools every day. The first has room between reasonable pay and profit. The second mostly doesn't. Same income, different answer.

The costs are real too. Payroll, a separate return, and a bookkeeping standard that doesn't tolerate mixing personal and business. Depending on your situation, that can eat the benefit.

Run your own numbers first: https://adamtraywick.com/s-corporation-tax-calculator/

Then let's talk about whether the structure actually fits your shop.

More on the threshold myth: https://adamtraywick.com/60k-income-to-switch-to-s-corporation/

Your hourly rate is not your hourly cost. Those are two different numbers, and only one of them is on your invoice.The s...
08/10/2026

Your hourly rate is not your hourly cost. Those are two different numbers, and only one of them is on your invoice.

The squeeze shows up like this. You price the call off what the tech earns per hour, add a margin that feels reasonable, and send it. What that math leaves out is everything between jobs.

Drive time. The truck. Insurance. The dispatcher. The hour a tech spends at the supply house. The call that got rescheduled twice. None of it is billable, and all of it is real.

Let's look at an example. A tech on the clock for eight hours might only bill five of them. If you priced the job assuming all eight were productive, you set your rate against a workday that doesn't exist.

The fix isn't raising prices across the board. It's knowing your billable hour ratio first, then pricing against it. Plenty of shops that run this math find their after-hours work was subsidizing their routine service calls, not the other way around.

That changes what you do next. Instead of a blanket increase that costs you the price-sensitive calls, you reprice the work that's actually underwater and leave the rest alone.

Pull your last month of dispatch data and your last month of payroll. The ratio between them is your real number.

Full breakdown: https://adamtraywick.com/how-to-price-plumbing-service-calls-2026/

Your P&L says you had a good month. It can't tell you which jobs paid for it.That's the gap most electrical contractors ...
08/06/2026

Your P&L says you had a good month. It can't tell you which jobs paid for it.

That's the gap most electrical contractors are working with. Revenue comes in, expenses go out, and the net number looks fine. But inside that number, some jobs carried the month and some quietly ate it.

Let's look at an example. Two service calls, same ticket price. One is a straight panel swap that took an afternoon. The other needed a second trip because the inspection failed, plus $300 in material nobody logged against the job. On the P&L they're identical. In reality one made money and one didn't.

Job costing closes that gap. Every hour, every part, every truck roll gets attached to the job it belongs to. Then you can see which work types, which crews, and which customers are actually worth your calendar.

Most electricians we talk to are pricing off gut feel and a competitor's rate sheet. Both are guesses. Your own job history is the only number that knows what your work costs you.

Start with the last 10 jobs you closed. If you can't say which one was most profitable, that's the project.

Full breakdown on the blog: https://adamtraywick.com/bookkeeping-for-electricians-job-costing/

If you run a multi-truck HVAC, plumbing, or electrical shop and you can't tell us which truck makes you money, you have ...
08/04/2026

If you run a multi-truck HVAC, plumbing, or electrical shop and you can't tell us which truck makes you money, you have a measurement problem before you have a pricing problem.

Revenue per technician is the number we ask about first when a trades owner sits down with us and says profit feels light.

What it actually measures: how much billable revenue each tech generates over a given period. Usually weekly or monthly. It cuts through the noise of total revenue and tells you what's really happening at the job level.

A few patterns we see across DFW trades shops:

The top tech often doubles the bottom tech. Not by a small margin. By two times. Same hours, same trucks, same dispatch system. The gap is skill, sales ability on add-ons, and how they handle the customer at the door.

A tech who looks slow on revenue is sometimes the most profitable. If they have a 60% close rate on bigger jobs and the speed demon has 25%, the slower tech is bringing in better margin per hour.

New hires usually need 90 days before the number is meaningful. Anything before that is a training curve, not their actual production.

Dispatch matters as much as technician skill. Sending the senior guy on the warranty no-charge call is a waste of his revenue capacity.

The fix isn't firing anyone. It's measuring what each tech actually produces, then matching the job assignment to the strength.

Most HVAC shops we work with find a 10% to 20% revenue lift in the first quarter just by tracking this number and adjusting the schedule.

https://adamtraywick.com/get-in-touch/

"QuickBooks is fine, right?"Maybe. Depends on how you run your plumbing business.Most plumbing shops use accounting soft...
07/30/2026

"QuickBooks is fine, right?"

Maybe. Depends on how you run your plumbing business.

Most plumbing shops use accounting software the same way they use the truck radio. It's there, it makes noise, nobody's really paying attention.

What plumbers actually need a system to do:

Track jobs by profitability, not just by total revenue. The $4,000 water heater install and the $400 service call are different businesses. If your books don't separate them, you can't price either one correctly.

Handle progress billing and deposits on bigger jobs. Repipes and remodels don't get paid in one check. The software needs to track what was billed, what was collected, and what's still in deposit.

Integrate with the field service tool. Most plumbing shops have a dispatch or scheduling app. If it doesn't talk to the accounting system, you're double-entering every invoice and missing 5% to 10% of the billable work.

Separate parts cost from labor on the P&L. Labor margin and parts margin tell completely different stories. Mashing them together hides where the money actually comes from.

Make it easy to pull a per-truck P&L. If you can't tell which crew is profitable and which is breaking even, you can't fix anything.

QuickBooks can do most of this with the right setup. ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro layer on the field side. Xero works if you're under 10 employees. The software isn't the problem. The setup usually is.

Full breakdown of the options, with what each one is actually built for: https://adamtraywick.com/best-accounting-software-for-plumbers-2025/

Address

3301 West Freeway, Ste 104
Fort Worth, TX
76107

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Adam Traywick, LLC - Certified Public Accountant posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Adam Traywick, LLC - Certified Public Accountant:

Shortcuts

Share

Category