Fall roofing calendars fill fast across the Texas Hill Country. Storm seasons, leftover heat, and holiday deadlines push owners to book now. Crews between Boerne, Fredericksburg, and Kerrville know the pattern: the phone gets louder right as the weather window gets shorter.
Up front deposits and progress draws fund different moments on the same roof. Treating every inbound dollar as earned roofing income on day one muddies cash before the rush. Matching the bill to the work on the roof is books hygiene for contractors, not tax advice.
What a deposit actually funds
A deposit often covers mobilization, materials orders, and a schedule hold before tear off is finished. Cash arrives early. The work it represents is not fully done. On the books, that cash still needs a clear home so you do not mistake a start payment for a finished job when you glance at the bank balance on Friday and decide the shop is “fine.”
Industry payment education around progress applications, including AIA style G702 and G703 practice, stresses tying billings to a schedule of values and to work that can be verified. Many residential roofers never touch a formal AIA form. The management idea still travels. Stage the story. Know what arrived as an advance and what arrived because a stage is done.
What a progress bill should follow
Progress billing should track stages you can point to on the roof: tear off, dry in, shingles or membrane, flashing, closeout. Bill what is verifiably done this period. Cash should follow the roof, not a hopeful percentage invented on Friday afternoon because payroll hits Monday.
When deposits and progress draws share one “roofing income” bucket with no stage checklist, October can look loud while cash still feels thin. You cannot tell what was earned, what was advanced, and what still has to be delivered. That confusion shows up when you try to buy the next material package or schedule the next crew day with confidence.
An illustrative roof from deposit to closeout
Here is a simple, hypothetical job with round numbers. It is for teaching only. It is not a real customer, a pricing guide, or a recommendation on how to structure your contracts.
Say a Boerne homeowner signs a $24,000 reroof. The schedule of values has three stages: tear off and dry in worth $8,000, shingles and flashing worth $12,000, and closeout worth $4,000. The contract asks for a $6,000 deposit at signing to hold the crew date and order materials, and that deposit is credited against the shingles and flashing stage.
- Signing day: $6,000 lands in the bank. No work is done yet.
- Week three: tear off and dry in are complete. You bill $8,000.
- Week four: shingles and flashing are complete. You bill $12,000, apply the $6,000 deposit, and $6,000 is due.
- Closeout: final walk and cleanup are done. You bill the last $4,000.
By the end, cash received and work completed both total $24,000. The trouble lives in the middle. If the deposit gets booked as roofing income on signing day, the books claim $6,000 was earned on a roof nobody has touched. Now add a wet stretch in late October that pushes tear off into November. The materials order already spent most of that deposit, the crew is working other jobs, and the P&L says October was a good month. None of that is fraud or even carelessness. It is simply a bookkeeping shortcut that tells the wrong story at the worst time.
Many contractors park deposits in a customer deposits account on the balance sheet and move them into income as the related work is done. Your CPA can confirm the right treatment for your accounting method. The operator lesson holds either way: know which dollars are advances and which are earned.
Where roof cash blurs
Booking every deposit as free income day one. Progress draws with no stage list. Mixing change order noise into the same bucket without a clear trail. Overstating percent complete to front load cash, then wondering why the last third of the job feels broke.
A steadier routine before the calendar tightens
Separate deposit cash from earned progress on every job. Tie each draw to a clear stage in language your superintendent and your bookkeeper both understand. Walk the open roof list weekly against what you billed. Soft close the week with one question: did the cash that landed match the work that landed?
If a customer paid early for materials not yet on site, say so in the books. If dry in is done and shingles are not, bill the stage you can defend. Clean staging keeps fall rush from turning into a cash mystery dressed up as a busy month. Hill Country roofs do not forgive a vague schedule. Your books should not either.
A practical test before you send the next draw: could you walk the owner or GC to the stage you are billing and point at it? If not, the books are ahead of the roof. Catch that before fall rush multiplies small staging errors into a month of cash confusion.
A draw checklist before you hit send
- The stage you are billing is complete and you could show it in person or in photos.
- Any deposit credit that belongs on this draw is applied and shown on the invoice.
- Approved change orders are listed on their own lines with their own trail.
- Materials delivered but not installed are described plainly, not folded into a finished stage.
- The draw matches the schedule of values the customer agreed to.
- The job’s billed to date total still leaves enough to fund the work that remains.
What to do this week
Pull every open roof on the calendar, from Comfort to San Antonio, and list three numbers for each one: deposit received, stages billed, and stages actually complete. Anywhere billed runs ahead of complete, make a note before the next draw goes out.
Next, look at where deposits have been landing in the books. If they have been going straight into income, talk with your bookkeeper about a cleaner home for them going forward. Finally, write down the stage names your crews and office will use so the field and the books speak the same language all fall. A shared vocabulary sounds small. On a busy Thursday, when a foreman calls in a finished dry in and the office needs to send the draw, it saves a surprising amount of back and forth.
Before the next draw goes out
Books literacy only. Not tax advice. Match the bill to the work on the roof.
Sources
AIA Contract Documents: G702 and G703 pay applications for contractors: https://learn.aiacontracts.com/articles/gc-pay-apps-g702-and-g703/
Procore library: A contractor’s guide to AIA billing (progress / schedule of values framing): https://www.procore.com/library/aia-billing
