Over The Past 30+ Years - I have accumulated a variety of terms to describe the construction industry. Some of them are intended to be funny, some are serious and the rest are entertaining. Please treat them accordingly.
If You Have - Any others you would like to share please leave a comment below
80/20 Rule – 80% of a contractor’s wealth and wellbeing comes from 20% of their activities
24 Hour Bookkeeper - Bookkeeper that sits in your office quietly, no watering, no feeding, available to work around the clock, never wastes company time surfing the web or chatting on cell phone
Aggravation Box - Computer with construction accounting software operated by a trainee
Auction - End result of working in the business, focusing on the wrong stuff and bad financial reports
Auditor - Person who goes in after the war is lost and bayonets the wounded
Assets of Company - Cash / Receivables – Payables / Trucks / Tools / Equipment / Material
Assets of Firm - Cash / Business Process / Sales Process / Client List / Predictable Cash Flow
Bad Bookkeeping - Saving money in the wrong place and making decisions on garbage reports
Bad Bookkeeper - Wealth prevention tool keeping contractors from earning more than bookkeepers
Bad Numbers - Lead to bad decisions / cash shrinks / business unstable / bankruptcy or failure
Bankruptcy - Result of saving money on bookkeeping and making decisions on garbage reports
BCA Business Coach - Someone who helps you raise your level of thinking and income
BCA Staff Member - Cheerful, well paid, thinking, responsible adult, Mastermind Team member
BCG Matrix - Graphical representation of Cash Cows / Rising Stars / Question Marks / Dogs
Bid - A wild guess carried out to two decimal places
Bid Collector - Customer looking for cheap contractor
Bid Opening - A poker game in which the losing hand wins
Black Box - Computer with construction accounting software operated by a trainee
Bookkeeper Training Contractor - Bookkeepers who train the boss to let them come in late, leave early, call friends and relatives, take long breaks, get paid more and do less and less.
BPM – Business Process Management for construction company owners to grow passive income streams
Business Failure - No meaningful financial and project management records in the calendar quarter preceding the failure
Business Life Cycle - Start small / grow big / lose shirt / shrink back to small business
Business Plan - A plan to have accurate financial reports to base long and short term decisions on
Business Process Management - Develop a construction business that generates passive income
Business Roundtable - Little round table in tavern with pitcher of beer and four contractors strategizing
Cheap - Not enough time or money to do it right first time; but plenty of time and money to do it over
Chaos - Always on the dollars coming in; never on the money going out
Client - Someone who buys construction services and is more concerned about quality than price
Comfort Zone - Success you have now since that is what you feel you deserve no more / no less
Company Bookkeeper - Expensive luxury for construction companies that do not know about outsourcing
Completion Date - The point at which liquidated damages begin
Contractors - The people who makes civilization possible by building and maintaining structures
Contractor Gambling - One project away from making it big or going broke
Contractor Chaos - Contractor netting <$100K doing everything his way; especially the bookkeeping
Contractor Cheap - Amateur with customers from Hell and host of the game show “Low Price Leader”
Contractor Income - The average income of the six people they spend the most time with
Contractor Rich - BCA client earning $100K-$200K by building a client base to sell and service
Contractor Student - BCA client net <$100K learning how to get Rich then Wealthy
Contractor Successful - Contractor using timely accurate financial reports to base their decisions upon
Contractor Volume - Loses money on every sale and tries to make it up with a volume of new work
Contractor Wealthy - BCA Client earning $200K + Investing 50K with 100 clients to service
Construction Bookkeeping - System for setup and maintaining construction bookkeeping
Construction Bookkeeping And Accounting - System for setup and maintaining construction accounting
Construction Accountant – Someone who turns piles of numbers into meaningful trends
C.P.A. - Someone who is qualified to do tax returns and we refer a lot of business to the ones tha only do tax returns.
C.P.A Construction Consultant - Someone who has seen a bunch of tax returns and thinks they know how to run a construction business. More dangerous to the contractors financial health than a drunken car salesman on a backhoe at a gas station, in the dark, digging up live fuel lines.
C.P.A Doing Construction Bookkeeping - QuickBooks setup to make doing tax returns easy while greasing the rails for the contractor to go down the tube and go broke by focusing only on reducing taxes not cash flow and profitable jobs.
Critical Path Method - A management technique for losing your shirt under perfect control
Customer - Someone who buys construction services and is more concerned about price than quality
Delayed Payment - A tourniquet applied at the bank balance of any contractor who will allow it
Delusional - Contractor going to learn to use QuickBooks effectively in a few months
Developer - Company looking for a few, good, low priced, high volume contractors they can school
Displaced Aggression - Being angry at someone due to events/circumstances from elsewhere
Engineer's Estimate - The cost of construction in heaven
Expensive - Goods or services that no matter how cheap they are; do not work
Experience - What you get, when you get, what you don’t want
Failure - A few errors in judgment repeated everyday
Fear - What initiates change or stops progress
Five At Five For Five – The five reports at five o’clock for five minutes that tells you how your business is doing
Fifteen Minutes Too Late - If you think you should fire somebody, you’re already 15 minutes too late
Fully Burdened Rate -Includes all the costs of keeping an employee on the payroll, not just wages
Hard Work - Expressway to Retired
Income - Working for daily money
Insanity - Hiring and firing cheap in-house bookkeepers over and over and over expecting useful reports
Inexpensive - Goods or services that do work beyond the warranty period
KPI - Key Performance Indicators if viewed daily and understood leads to wealth
Lawyer - Person who goes in after the auditors to strip the bodies
Leveling - When two or more people spend time together the group will level to the strongest personality
Listening - Contractor who asks their client what materials and results they want and give it to them
Little Leaks - Sink the construction business because they are easy to ignore like what ten minutes is costing your company
Liquidated Damages - A penalty for failing to achieve the impossible
Low Bidder - A contractor who is wondering what he left out
Mastermind Team - BCA Staff and Clients who mentor BCA contractor clients
MAP – Marketing / Accounting / Production / formula for success
MR>MC - Wherever marginal revenue exceeds marginal cost do the job
No Financial Reports – Driving on the highway, at night, windows blacked out and being surprised by the crash
Non-Construction Accountant – Dim-bulb trying to jam retail accounting methods into construction accounting
Not Listening - Contractor who gives their clients what the contractor likes not what the client wants
OSHA - A protective coating made by half-baking a mixture of fine print, red tape, split hairs and baloney
PAM – Production / Accounting after checks bounce and letters for back taxes / Marketing word of mouth
Pioneer - Contractor with flaming arrows in the back from asking the bookkeeper for accurate reports
Poor Contractors - Have hundred dollar conversations with their mentors and attend the business round table
Process - System to produce predicable quality results and reap dividends for the owners
Process Development - Do it, Document it, and Delegate it
Project Manager - The conductor of an orchestra in which every musician is in a different union
Project Management - Combination of skills and construction project software
QuickBooks For Contractors - Accounting software for construction companies
Rain Maker - The person in the contractors firm that acquires new clients
Purpose of Firm - Acquire clients and satisfy their needs
Remodel House - Forming (Honeymoon), Storming (demolition), Norming (Rough-In), Performing (Paint)
Retail Bookkeeper - Worked at store somewhere, thinks all accounting is the same, expensive lesson for contractors
Retired - Means you got tired of them, or they got tired of you
Rich - Income exceeds outgo
ROI - Risk of Incarceration; in most cases the business owner is responsible for unfiled taxes and missed payments, not the bad bookkeeper
Salesperson - Amateur sorter
Sales Process - Documented system for acquiring new clients for the Firm
Solution - Properly setup and maintained QuickBooks For Contractors file
Sorter - Professional Rain Maker
Strategic Bookkeeping Services - Bookkeeping services for construction that understands and applies principles of profit and growth strategies
Strategy of Preeminence - Contractor with the clients best interests in mind
Strike - An effort to increase egg production by strangling the chicken
Success - A few simple disciplines practiced everyday
SWOT - Knowing the company’s Strengths / Weaknesses / Opportunities / Threats and what to do about it
Tax Preparer Doing Construction Bookkeeping - QuickBooks setup to make doing tax returns easy while greasing the rails for the contractor to go broke focusing only on reducing taxes not cash flow and profitable jobs.
Tenant Improvement – Bid, award contract, work day and night, pressure, pressure, pressure, done!
The Contractors Accountant – Someone who cares about contractors and their well-being, Randal DeHart
Warranty Work - The project that never ends
Wealthy Contractors - Work on building relationships and innovating (faster/better/cheaper)
Wealthy Contractors - Have million dollar conversations with their mentors
Wealth - Not working because you have enough cash to live the rest of your life
Working On Wrong Stuff – You can’t get rich with your head in the ditch
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