General Ledger for Contractors

A general ledger is the complete, double-entry record of every financial transaction a business makes — the foundation real financial statements (Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow) get built from. Generic small-business accounting software has a general ledger too, but its default chart of accounts is built for a business that sells one thing to one customer at a time — not a contractor running multiple jobs simultaneously, each with its own cost codes, retainage, and billing method.

Why job costing alone isn't the same as a real ledger

A lot of construction software tracks "job costing" — cost against budget, project by project — without actually being a full general ledger underneath it. That's useful for watching a single job's numbers, but it's not the same as having real double-entry bookkeeping the whole business's financial statements can be built from. A company running job costing without a real ledger underneath it often still needs a separate accounting system (or a bookkeeper's spreadsheet) to actually close the books.

What a real construction general ledger requires

A chart of accounts built for how a contractor's business actually works, not a generic retail template. Real double-entry journal entries, with debit and credit enforced — not a simplified in/out tracker. And financial statements that come straight from the ledger itself once the books close, not assembled by hand from several disconnected reports.

How PoPs Ledger handles it

A construction-specific chart of accounts (editable to the company's own structure), real double-entry journal entries with debit and credit enforced, and financial statements — Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement — generated straight from the ledger. Accounts receivable and accounts payable both live in the same system, with AP fed directly by PoPs Procurement's vendor pipeline so a bill doesn't need re-entry. An outside accountant or bookkeeper can log in directly to review the books rather than working from exported spreadsheets, and a one-way export to QuickBooks is available any time for a company that wants to keep QuickBooks as its system of record.