The call comes in. There’s a project you want to bid, but it requires bonding you don’t currently have. Your surety agent asks for financial statements. You scramble to get something together, and when the surety reviews it, they send it back with a list of questions your books can’t answer.
That scenario costs contractors real money. Not because their businesses aren’t strong enough to get bonded, but because their financials don’t tell the story the surety needs to hear.
What Sureties Actually Want to See
Bonding companies aren’t just checking your profitability. They’re evaluating your financial discipline. They want to know that you understand your numbers, that your books are maintained by someone who knows construction accounting, and that your financial picture is presented in a format they can trust.
Specifically, that means:
Accrual-basis financial statements. Most contractors run on cash basis day-to-day, which is fine for operations. But sureties want to see accrual-basis financials that reflect earned revenue, not just collected revenue. If your books are cash-only, we convert them.
A current WIP schedule. Not the one from last year’s tax return. A current one that shows every open job, percentage complete, costs to date, estimated costs to complete, and over/under billing. Sureties read WIP schedules the way you read blueprints. Every number matters.
Balance sheet that makes sense. Retainage receivable separated from regular AR. Equipment and depreciation properly stated. Debt obligations clearly laid out. Current ratio and working capital that a surety can calculate without guessing.
Job cost detail by project. Your surety wants to see that you’re tracking costs at the job level. If your biggest project shows 45% complete but 70% of the budget spent, they need to see that you know about it and have an explanation.
What We Prepare
We build your complete bonding package: financial statements, WIP schedule, job cost summary, and supporting schedules. All formatted the way sureties expect to see them, because we’ve built these packages before and we know what gets approved and what gets sent back.
This isn’t a one-time document dump. If you’re on our monthly accounting service, your financials are always ready for surety review. When the bonding opportunity comes, you don’t scramble. You send the package and move on to the bid.
If you’re not yet on monthly service and just need a bonding package prepared, we can do that too. We’ll clean up what needs cleaning, prepare the statements and WIP, and deliver a package that’s ready to submit.
Why This Matters for Growth
Bonding capacity is the ceiling on the size of work you can pursue. Every dollar of bond line you can’t access is a project you can’t bid. And most of the time, the gap isn’t your financial strength. It’s how your financials are presented.
We’ve seen contractors with solid businesses get denied bond increases because their books were on cash basis with no job costing. We’ve seen the same contractors get approved after their financials were restructured and presented properly. The business didn’t change. The financial story did.
If you’re a sub who’s ready to take on bigger commercial projects, or you’re a GC looking to increase your bonding program, the financial package is the bridge between where you are and where you want to be.
How to Get Started
If you’re already working with us on monthly accounting, your bonding package is essentially built. We maintain the financials, the WIP, and the job cost detail as part of the ongoing engagement. When you need a bonding package, we pull it together and deliver it.
If you’re coming to us specifically for bonding-ready financials, we start with a review of your current books and work with your surety agent to understand exactly what they need. Then we build the package to those specifications.
Get Your Numbers Bond-Ready
Whether you need a bonding package next week or you want to start building toward one, we’ll look at where your financials stand today and tell you exactly what it takes to get them ready.