This is a guest contribution from Randal DeHart of FastEasyAccounting.com.

I have been involved with construction beginning in the mid 1960’s as a kid working in the family construction company through the present time.

Over the decades I have gathered and documented a comprehensive list of terms that describe construction. Some of them are meant to bring a smile to your face, some are serious and the rest I hope are simply entertaining.

This Article Contains Definitions That Begin With The Letter “A”

80/20 Rule 80% of a contractor’s wealth and well-being comes from 20% of their clients and their daily activities.

24 Hour Bookkeeper also known as a scanner connected to our paperless server; sits in your office quietly, no watering, no feeding, always ready to perform 24-7, never wastes company time surfing the web or chatting or texting on their cell phone.

Apprentice Communication is what happens when apprentices point at something while making deep noises from their chest sound like important messages from their brain all in a feeble attempt to hide the fact they know nothing at all, about anything.

Aggravation Box is a desktop, notebook or tablet computer with construction accounting software operated by a trainee with no clue about accounting let alone construction accounting.

Auction the sad and yet inevitable end of a promising construction company where the upper management and/or owner spent time working in the business, focusing on the wrong stuff and relying on bad financial and job costing reports due to incompetent bookkeeping.

Auditor is the person who goes in after the war is lost, the contractor is bankrupt and bayonets any hope of recovery.

Assets of Construction Company are as follows: Cash, Receivables, Trucks, Tools, Equipment and Material.

Assets of Construction Firm are cash, Business Process, Sales Process, Client List and Predictable Cash Flow. (There is a lot of information if you understand the differences between a company and a firm.)

Please feel free to share them with anyone and especially contractors who need a bit of humor and homespun wisdom and perhaps they will find value.

About The Author:

Randal DeHart, PMP, QPA The Construction Accountant. Randal DeHart, PMP, QPA is the co-founder of Business Consulting And Accounting in Lynnwood Washington and Fast Easy Accounting. He is the leading expert in outsourced construction bookkeeping and accounting services for small construction companies across the USA. He is experienced as a Contractor, Project Management Professional, Construction Accountant, Intuit ProAdvisor, QuickBooks For Contractors Expert and Xero Accounting Specialist and Bill.Com Certified Guru. Visit http://www.fasteasyaccounting.com/ to learn more. Follow Randal on Google+

Sometimes, even my wife and I get duped into hiring a contractor who turns out to be less than professional.  It happened to us just a few weeks ago.  There was a very large, dead, pine tree in our front yard that needed to be cut down.  Every tree service in town had either left a business card on the door or tracked me down in the yard with a spur-of-the-moment estimate.  For whatever reason I kept putting it off.

I guess my wife was tired of the procrastination.  She went ahead and just hired somebody one day while I was away doing my thing for somebody else.  I think she was mildly impressed by his hustle and persistence as he had been working the whole street all day.  By the third time he came around to bang on our door his price had dropped by a hundred bucks and she jumped at a deal.  The next thing I knew I was getting a text message: “the tree is coming down”.

They asked for “flavored” refreshments and then left the solo cups all over the yard.

The service was performed without major problems, but then the weirdness began.  First there was a somewhat intimidating request for refreshments from the owner.  What’s more, her offer of ice water wasn’t good enough for his crew.  They needed something with “flavor”.  Reluctantly, she whipped up some lemonade and brought it to them in the yard.  Mind you, she was home alone with two toddlers in the house who were going bonkers throughout.

Then, when they had finished up, the owner went to the door to ask not only for payment but also for a tip.  A TIP!  Servers should expect to be tipped.  Taxi drivers should expect to be tipped.  CONTRACTORS SHOULD NOT EXPECT TO BE TIPPED.  If you do a knock-out job on a project and the homeowner wants to throw you a few extra bones then wonderful.  But, it shouldn’t be expected.  And you certainly shouldn’t ask for one!  So unprofessional.  When I arrived that evening I found my front yard to be in disarray, and their red solo cups strewn all over the yard like trash.

All Hustle And No Class Will Make Tree Guy A Poor Boy

On some level I have to respect the hustle and the drive of this guy.  He wasn’t sitting and waiting for the phone to ring.  He was working my neighborhood like his life depended on it: banging on doors, running all over giving estimates, and just generally harassing the hell out of people until they agreed to hire him.  He had no fear, which can be a helpful instinct for service providers who want to be successful.

BUT…hustle and audacity have to be balanced by class and professionalism.  Just to break this lesson down:

1. Don’t ask for refreshments.  It’s not that hard to fill a cooler with ice and gatorade every morning before you leave home.
2. Don’t ask for a tip.  It makes you look like an amateurish tool and it’s just kind of rude and weird.  If somebody wants to offer you an unsolicited tip then great, but I think you’ll find that this is a rare occurrence.  It’s better to just price your jobs appropriately in the beginning.  Don’t low-ball and then hope to make up for it with a big tip at the end because this just isn’t going to happen.
3. Clean up after yourself.  When you are done and gone it should look like YOU WERE NEVER THERE.  The homeowner doesn’t want to see ant-covered solo cups all over the flipping yard after you’re gone.

At the end of the day, tree guy performed his service and he got some money out of my pocket.  But I will never hire him again.  It’s a shame…I have a few more trees that are starting to go and will need removal in the next year or two.  It’s thousands of dollars worth of work.  Had he been more of a pro I likely would have brought him back.  But, I don’t let people make a fool of me more than once.

Ways to become a millionaire:

1. Win the lottery.  Not a likely scenario.  Save your money.
2. Invest in real estate or the stock market.  Both good ideas but this will probably take a long time before you can enjoy the proceeds.
3. Become a surgeon, lawyer, or high-level corporate executive.  These types quite often do attain wealth-status, but what if you don’t have the time or money to attend college for 6+ years?  And what if none of those professions seems appealing to you?
4. Start your own business.  The most tried and true method for attaining staggering amounts of wealth in the United States.  You don’t need a degree, a rich relative, or a secret formula.  All you need is desire and a willingness to learn from your mistakes.  Research your market and if there is a demand for your service or idea, go for it.  Dominate your competition, expect quality from yourself and your business, treat people well, never grow complacent, and you could be shopping for a vacation home in Hawaii before your whiz-kid friend from high school has even finished med school.

It’s time to take your life and your finances to the next level.  No more excuses.  Are you ready?  If so, then start by going through the 13 steps of how to become a contractor.

Many in the contracting and construction industry are notorious for their indecent behavior.  By that I mean that there are all too many that show up to a job-site late or not at all, that don’t return phone calls in a timely manner (anything more than 24 hours is totally inexcusable), or that treat their customers with a general lack of respect.  Of course this trend is not exclusive to our industry, but it seems more widespread in our line of work than most others.  How else do you explain the explosive growth of companies like Angie’s List?

The downside to all this is that those of us that DO show up on time, that DO return phone calls, that DO send a thank you letter to every customer, and that DO make a real attempt to treat every customer or homeowner with respect will nevertheless be lumped in with those that do not, at least intitially.  In the eyes of many homeowners, contractors are guilty until proven innocent.  This can make for some interesting and occasionally tense first meetings and estimates with potential clients who view us as being modern-day snake oil salesmen.  But can you blame them?  This business has a way of attracting some unsavory practitioners, and one can hardly open a newspaper or watch the nightly local news without seeing a story about how some poor widow homeowner got screwed by a contractor in one way or another.  These are the kinds of people that give the rest of us a bad name, and that contribute in ultimately making our society one of increasing distrust and skepticism.  But I digress.

The upside to all this, from the contractor-entrepreneur’s viewpoint, is that the bar of excellence has been lowered so drastically that any amount of general decency, competency, and professionalism on your part will almost certainly gain you repeat business, free construction leads, and tremendous demand for your services.  In other words, if you want to become a contractor who is highly successful just know that it’s almost a GUARANTEE if you simply do what you say you will do and charge a price that is fair to both the homeowner and yourself.  Of course nothing happens overnight, and this is certainly not the field for you if you are a get-rich-quick junkie or are expecting to make a lot of money without breaking a sweat, but with the right attitude and a good work ethic you’ll find that the playing field is heavily skewed in your favor.  The Golden Rule applies here, and its daily application in your business will return plenty of “gold” back to you.  What you put out there in the universe comes back to you ten-fold.

In contracting, as in life, those that show up to the game prepared, eager, and honest will be richly rewarded.  Just be decent, and you’ll find that there’s virtually no competition.