Break the Radius: Why Your Next Great Construction Accountant Probably Doesn't Live Near You

Finding a great construction accountant is like threading a needle in the dark. After more than 15 years working with contractors—helping many of them search for controllers, CFOs, assistant controllers, and accounting managers—I've watched the same frustrating pattern play out over and over again.

The problem isn't that great construction accountants don't exist. They do. The problem is that contractors are looking for them in the wrong place.

The Four-Factor Problem

For a construction accountant hire to actually work, four factors need to align simultaneously.

First, the accountant needs genuine accounting horsepower. Construction accounting isn't data entry. It requires someone who can think critically, solve problems, and navigate complexity. You need someone with the intellectual capacity to actually add value—not just process transactions.

Second, they need construction experience. This is where most searches start to fall apart. Construction accounting is its own animal. Job costing, work-in-progress schedules, retention, AIA billing, certified payroll—these aren't things you pick up in a week. A generalist accountant, no matter how talented, is going to struggle to deliver the outcomes contractors actually need. The learning curve is steep, and most contractors don't have six months to wait while someone figures out how WIP works.

Third, timing has to work. The accountant needs to be available when you're looking to hire. This sounds obvious, but it's a real constraint. The best people are usually employed, and even when they're open to a move, your window might not align with theirs.

Fourth—and this is where it gets really difficult—the accountant needs to be within a reasonable commuting distance of your office. Most contractors still believe they need someone in the office to make the hire work. So now you're not just looking for accounting talent with construction experience who happens to be available. You're looking for all of that within a 30 or 40-mile radius of your location.

The Math Doesn't Work

Think about what you're really asking for. You need someone at the intersection of strong accounting skills, specialized construction knowledge, current availability, and geographic proximity. Each of those factors narrows your pool. Stack all four together, and you're often left with no viable candidates at all—or you're settling for someone who checks two or three boxes but not all four.

I've seen this play out dozens of times. Contractors spend months searching. They interview candidates who are close but not quite right. They make compromises they shouldn't make. Or they just leave the position open, limping along with an understaffed accounting function while the business suffers.

The geographic constraint is the killer. It takes a national (or even international) talent pool and shrinks it down to whoever happens to live near you. And in many markets, that's just not enough people.

Break the Radius

The solution is deceptively simple: stop requiring your accountant to commute.

When you open up to remote candidates—people who work full-time for your company but don't drive to your office every day—you dramatically expand your options. Suddenly you're not limited to the handful of construction-experienced accountants within 40 miles. You can find someone with the right background, the right expertise, and the right availability, regardless of where they live.

I know this feels like a leap for a lot of contractors. Construction is a relationship-driven, boots-on-the-ground industry. The idea of having your accounting function handled by someone you don't see every day can feel uncomfortable.

But here's what I've learned: the factors that actually determine whether an accountant succeeds—their skills, their construction knowledge, their reliability—have nothing to do with where they sit. The best construction accountant for your business probably doesn't live in your town. They might not even live in your state.

If you keep limiting your search to people who can commute to your office, you're going to keep running into the same problem: too few candidates, too many compromises, and too much time wasted on searches that don't pan out.

Break the radius. The talent pool you need is out there. You just have to be willing to look beyond your backyard to find it.

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