A construction controller over your bookkeeper, working in your accounting system. Monthly WIP, job-cost control, a month-end close you can hand to your banker and bond agent, and someone who tells you what the numbers mean. For contractors doing $5M to $50M a year.
From $4,000 a month, fixed fee, month to month. No contract.
Most contractors between $5M and $50M are run on the same setup: a good bookkeeper who pays the bills, bills the jobs and keeps the bank reconciled, and an owner who reads the bank balance because the financials come too late to be useful. Nobody is sitting between the two. That gap is the controller's job, and it shows up as:
A full-time construction controller costs $110,000 to $150,000 a year plus benefits, and a good one is hard to find and harder to keep. Hiring a general-business controller who has never seen a WIP schedule usually makes the problem worse.
Contractors with $5M to $50M in annual revenue who already have a bookkeeper (in-house or outsourced) and no controller, or a controller who is really a senior bookkeeper. General contractors, specialty contractors and trade contractors. Contractors who are bonded, or want to be, and need WIP-based financials their surety will accept. Contractors whose banker has started asking for monthly numbers instead of annual ones.
Not a fit: contractors under $5M (a monthly WIP preparation service is usually the right size); contractors who want us to run payroll (we don't; we work alongside your payroll provider); contractors who want a controller on site every day; contractors with no bookkeeper at all who need the day-to-day accounting done too (see our outsourced construction accounting service, which includes it).
Your bookkeeper keeps doing what they do. We take over the parts a controller is supposed to own.
What we don't do: payroll processing, tax returns, or the daily transaction work your bookkeeper already handles. If you need the daily work done too, that's our outsourced construction accounting service.
It stays month to month. Most clients who start with us for a specific problem, a bonding requirement or a bank covenant, keep going because the monthly numbers finally mean something.
We work in your system, so it has to be one we know. Our controllers work in QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop and Enterprise, Intuit Enterprise Suite, Sage 100 Contractor, Sage Intacct Construction, Foundation, Viewpoint Spectrum and Vista, and ComputerEase, with Procore, Buildertrend or JobTread on the project side.
If you're on QuickBooks, the job cost and WIP work takes some extra structure, because QuickBooks won't build a WIP schedule for you. We bring the templates. If you're thinking about moving systems, we'll tell you whether you need to; most contractors under $50M don't, they need the system they have set up properly.
From $4,000 a month, fixed fee, month to month. That covers the close, the WIP schedule, job-cost control, the management package, the monthly meeting and the reporting to your bank, bond agent and CPA. There is no hourly billing and no annual contract. If you want to stop, you stop at the end of the month.
We price it fixed on purpose. Hourly billing puts you and your accountant on opposite sides of every phone call. A fixed fee means you call when something is wrong, which is when a controller is worth having.
We quote after the first call. Four things move the number up from $4,000:
How many open jobs you run. A contractor with 15 jobs in progress at month-end is a different close than one with 60. Job count drives the WIP work and the job-cost checks more than revenue does.
How many entities. Each company that needs its own close and its own financials adds work, and intercompany balances add more.
The state of the books today. If the last clean year-end was two years ago, or the balance sheet has accounts nobody can explain, the first few months include catch-up. We scope that separately and tell you what it is before you commit.
Your bookkeeper. A strong bookkeeper who hits the close calendar keeps us at the base price. If the bookkeeping itself needs rebuilding, that is our outsourced construction accounting service, and we'll say so.
We'll tell you on the first call where you land. If a full-time controller is the better answer for you, we'll say that too.
Three ways to work with us, and the difference is how much of the accounting you want to keep in-house.
WIP preparation (from $2,500 a month): you keep your bookkeeper and your close. You send us the reports, we send back a WIP schedule and the entries to post. One deliverable, no system access. Right for contractors under $5M or anyone who only needs the WIP done right.
Construction controller services (from $4,000 a month): you keep your bookkeeper. We work in your system as the controller: the close, the WIP, job-cost control, the management package and the monthly meeting. This page.
Outsourced construction accounting (from $5,000 a month): we do the daily accounting too, with a construction bookkeeper and a controller on your account. Right when there is no bookkeeper, or the one you have is leaving.
Not sure which one? Book the call. We'll put you in the right one, and it's easy to move between them later.
A construction controller who knows WIP, job costing and what a surety wants runs $110,000 to $150,000 in salary in most US markets. That's the number you see. The loaded number is bigger.
Cost per year, in-house controller vs Levvigo:
Salary figures are market ranges for construction controllers as of Oct 2026; load and recruiting are rules of thumb.
When in-house is the right answer. Above $50M, or when you have several entities and a steady flow of acquisitions, you probably need a controller in the building, and a CFO over them. We'll tell you that on the call. We'll help you hire one, and we'll train the controller you have or the one you hire, on WIP, job costing and what the surety needs, until they can run the close without us.
When it isn't. Between $5M and $50M, most contractors don't have a full-time controller's worth of work; they have a full-time controller's worth of problems that show up once a month. A fixed monthly fee covers the problems without the salary, and you're not one resignation away from no close at all.
The hybrid. Plenty of our clients keep an in-house controller and use us for WIP, job-cost analysis and the management package. See WIP preparation services.
Your account is run by a construction accountant trained and managed by Bryce Wisan, CPA, CCIFP, who spent 15 years in construction accounting, including running the construction practice at a national CPA firm, before founding Levvigo. Bryce is on the editorial committee of CFMA's Building Profits and is on the monthly call with you.
$18M mechanical contractor, Mountain West. A good bookkeeper, an outside CPA at year-end, and no WIP schedule in between. The owner was reading the bank balance and the P&L swung $200,000 month to month. In the first month we cleaned up cost codes on 40 open jobs, built the starting WIP with the project managers, and posted the entries. $340,000 of over-billings came off the P&L and onto the balance sheet, three jobs that looked profitable showed up as going backward, and the bank renewed the line of credit on interim WIP-basis statements for the first time. The bookkeeper is still there. So are we, two years later.
A bookkeeper records what happened: bills, invoices, payroll entries from your provider, bank reconciliations. A controller makes the records mean something: closes the month, prepares the WIP schedule, checks job cost against estimates, posts the entries a bookkeeper doesn't, and turns it into financials an owner, a banker and a surety can use. Most contractors under $50M have the first and not the second.
A controller who works for your company on a fixed monthly fee instead of a salary, inside your accounting system, with construction-specific experience. You get the controller's work (close, WIP, job-cost control, reporting) without hiring, and without a general-business controller who has never seen a WIP schedule.
Yes, in practice. "Fractional controller" and "outsourced controller" describe the same thing: a controller you don't employ full time. We use "construction controller services" because the construction part is what matters.
From $4,000 a month, fixed fee, month to month. Open job count, number of entities and the state of the books move it up from there. We give you the number on the first call or the day after. A full-time construction controller costs $160,000 to $220,000 a year once salary, benefits and recruiting are counted.
Yes. Controller work happens in the system, not from exports: posting entries, fixing job-cost coding, running the close. We'll need a user login. Your bookkeeper keeps theirs and keeps doing their work.
They stay. We direct the close calendar and the cleanup, they do the daily work, and for the first time they have a controller to ask. If the bookkeeping itself needs to be rebuilt, we'll tell you, and that moves to our outsourced construction accounting service. If you already have a controller who hasn't done construction before, we can train them instead.
The first month is cleanup, and you'll have a starting WIP schedule and a list of what we found within it. Most clients have a reliable monthly close by month two or three. If the books haven't had a clean year-end in a while, we scope the catch-up separately and tell you how long it will take before you commit.
Interim financials prepared on a WIP basis, with over- and under-billings on the balance sheet, are what sureties and construction lenders ask for. We prepare them that way every month and we'll get on the phone with your bond agent or banker to walk through them. Your CPA still issues the year-end statements; our work makes that faster and cheaper.
Yes, and it's most of what we see between $5M and $50M. QuickBooks won't build a WIP schedule or hold estimate-to-complete, so we bring the templates and the process. We work in QuickBooks Online, Desktop and Enterprise, and in the construction systems listed above.
No. A CFO works on financing, strategy and the bank relationship; a controller makes sure the numbers that feed all of that are right. If you need a CFO, you need one with a working controller underneath, and that's what we are. We'll tell you if your situation calls for a CFO too.
No. We work alongside your payroll provider and your CPA. Payroll stays with a payroll company; the tax return stays with your CPA, who gets a cleaner set of books from us.
You stop at the end of the month. No contract, no notice period beyond that. Everything we've built stays in your system, because it was always in your system.
Book a 30-minute call. Tell us how the accounting runs today and what the bank or the bond agent is asking for. You'll leave the call knowing whether you need a controller, what it would cost from us, and what it would cost to hire one. No proposal deck, no follow-up sequence.
Bryce Wisan, CPA, CCIFP · 15 years in construction accounting · Fixed fee, month to month