Surety Bonding Package Preparation for Small Contractors

Sound familiar?

Do you recognize these contractors?

The sub going GC

"Our only issue is the bonding."

A 20-year subcontractor, strong crew, solid reputation. Wants to bid as a general contractor for the first time. Cash-basis QuickBooks, no WIP schedule, no surety-ready financials. They've never needed them before.

The overperformer stuck at capacity

"Accurate reporting on our WIP was more important even than showing a really good profit."

Beats forecast by 2x, but the underwriter won't increase capacity. The issue isn't profitability. It's predictability. The surety can't trust projections they can't reconcile.

The contractor about to lose a deal

"I have to somehow increase my limitation before the project."

A specific project on the table, but bonding capacity won't cover it. WIP is an Excel file last updated two months ago. Year-end CPA statements are still months away. The surety won't move.

The structural gap

Why small contractor financials fail surety review

Native WIP capability in QuickBooks

"WIP reporting will be a manual process if you're utilizing QBO." Every small contractor produces WIP in Excel, or not at all.

94%

Spreadsheets contain errors

Controllers spend half a day stitching together a WIP schedule in Excel. By the time it's done, the numbers are already stale.

150+

Days for year-end CPA statements

Sureties want statements within 90-120 days. Late delivery means conservative underwriting and reduced capacity. Half a year of constrained bonding.

Accounting systems that don't talk

"P/L for contractors is tricky because cash and profit are different things." Cash-basis books for taxes. Accrual-basis for sureties. Most small contractors have never bridged the gap.

What changes

Better financials, bigger book

For surety producers

Contractors qualify for larger bonds. More premium on the same client relationship.
Clean, consistent WIP schedules that underwriters don't question. Faster turnaround on capacity decisions.
No more chasing contractors for documents that never arrive formatted correctly.

For construction CPAs

Pre-organized data before your review engagement starts. Fieldwork drops from 5 days to 2.
No more explaining the difference between compilations, reviews, and audits to confused clients.
Clients arrive with accrual-basis statements and reconciled WIP. Your expertise goes to judgment, not cleanup.

$650K

Documented bonding capacity increase from a single balance sheet cleanup. A San Jose contractor went from $900K to $1.55M capacity after properly capitalizing equipment and cleaning up personal expenses. That's one extra $500K project at 7% margin, worth $35K in profit. The cost of the prep work is a fraction of that.

What this could look like

Surety-ready financial packages, delivered monthly

I'd like to build a service that handles the financial preparation layer between the contractor's books and what the CPA and surety actually need. Not replacing the CPA. Making their job faster and the contractor's data cleaner.

Ingest

Pull project data from existing systems. QuickBooks, Sage, Procore, spreadsheets. No software switch required.

Generate WIP

Produce surety-ready WIP schedules with consistent formatting, complete fields, and reconciliation to books.

Convert

Bridge the gap between cash-basis books and accrual-basis surety requirements. Interim financial statements, monthly or quarterly.

Package

Format year-end financial packages for CPA review. Pre-CPA preparation, not CPA replacement. The CPA still signs off.

Who's behind this

Christo Wilken

Automation engineer, based in Germany

What drew me to this problem: watching contractors lose projects they could handle to competitors. Not because they lack experience or crew. Because their WIP schedule is an Excel file with formula errors, and their CPA won't have year-end statements ready for another four months. The work goes to whoever has cleaner financials, not whoever does better work.

I've studied the surety underwriting process, read NASBP guidance on what producers need from contractors, analyzed how sureties evaluate WIP schedules, and dug through contractor forums where people describe hitting capacity ceilings they don't understand. I'd like to build something that prepares surety-ready financial packages automatically, so contractors get the bonding capacity their work history deserves, and producers can grow their book without fighting over messy financials.

Let's talk

Send me a contractor's situation. I'll tell you what the surety is actually seeing.

If you have a contractor whose financials are holding back their bonding capacity, I'd like to hear about it. No commitment. I'll look at what's going on and tell you what's fixable.

Book a 20-minute conversation

Email me directly

Message received.

I'll review what you've sent and get back to you within 24 hours.

Your contractors' financials aren't clean enough to maximize their bonding capacity.