Most bookkeepers can balance a ledger. That's table stakes. What they can't do — what a general-purpose bookkeeper is almost never trained to do — is account for the way money actually moves through a restoration company.
The ACV/RCV Problem
When a carrier approves a claim, they typically pay the Actual Cash Value (ACV) upfront and hold back the Recoverable Depreciation (RCV) until work is completed. That holdback can sit open for weeks or months. A standard bookkeeper records the ACV payment as income and ignores the holdback — or worse, records it at the wrong time.
The result: your P&L shows income you haven't earned yet, or doesn't show income you've already earned. Either way, you're making decisions based on wrong numbers.
Supplements Are Their Own Category
A supplement is additional scope approved by the carrier after the initial estimate. Approved supplements need to be tracked from submission through carrier review to payment — because they don't automatically show up anywhere. If a supplement is approved but never billed, or billed but never reconciled to a payment, the money disappears. This happens constantly in companies without dedicated restoration bookkeeping.
We track every open supplement, every month, as a separate line item. You get a recovery report showing what came in and what's still outstanding.
TPA Fees Are Not a Rounding Error
If you work Contractor Connection, Alacrity, Code Blue, or any other TPA program, they take 10–18% of every job routed through their system. That's not a transaction fee — it's a cost of revenue that belongs on its own line in your P&L. If it's buried in miscellaneous expenses or just netted against revenue, you can't see the true profitability of each program.
We've seen companies drop TPA programs they thought were profitable once the fees were properly isolated. We've also seen companies lean harder into programs they were undervaluing. The data only exists if it's properly coded.
Equipment Is a Daily Revenue Line
Air movers and dehumidifiers bill daily per the Xactimate price list. Most restoration companies bill them once at job close — if at all. Equipment revenue is the most consistently under-billed line in the industry.
Proper restoration bookkeeping reconciles equipment-day logs against invoices to catch unbilled days before the job closes.
This is what we mean when we say we built our practice for restoration companies specifically. It's not a slightly modified general ledger. It's a completely different discipline.
Related reading: The Complete Guide to Bookkeeping for Restoration Companies · Why Restoration Companies Need Specialized Bookkeepers · Why Your CPA Doesn't Replace a Restoration-Specific Bookkeeper