A lighting company bookkeeper bills retrofits, landscape jobs and holiday programs, posts deposits to the right season, and follows utility rebate checks until they arrive. They code lift rentals, fixtures and crew hours to each job so the CFO can see which work pays.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
Median pay, electrical contractors · BLS, May 2025
You'll keep the books for our lighting company accurate through seasonal swings. You invoice commercial jobs and holiday programs, track deposits and utility rebate payments, pay fixture distributors and lift rental companies, and code costs to each job so the CFO / Accountant can see job profit.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Invoice completed jobs, commercial progress bills and holiday lighting programs.
Track holiday deposits and final payments and apply them to the right season's invoice.
Track utility rebate payments assigned to the company until each one is paid.
Enter and pay bills from fixture distributors, lift rental companies and other vendors.
Code labor, materials and rentals to each job for job costing.
Prepare payroll inputs for year-round and seasonal staff.
Reconcile bank and credit card accounts monthly and prepare sales tax data.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Enter bills and match them to purchase orders and jobs.
Post customer payments and deposits.
Send invoices for jobs closed the day before.
Follow up on past-due commercial accounts.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Days from job closeout to invoice: [your target].
Receivables past due: [your target].
Bills coded to the correct job: [your target].
Rebate payments tracked to receipt: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
[2+] years of full-cycle bookkeeping, ideally at a contractor.
Experience with job costing and progress billing.
Experience with [your accounting software].
Keeps deposits, invoices and job codes accurate when holiday volume peaks.
6. Preferred Experience
Experience with construction or electrical contractor accounting.
Familiarity with how your state taxes contractor materials and labor.
Associate degree in accounting.
7. Physical Requirements
Long periods at a computer entering and checking data.
Occasional lifting of file boxes up to [25] pounds.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
Works from [main office location][, with hybrid options].
Weekday hours: [your schedule].
Heavier workload from October through January with holiday billing and year-end.
9. Compensation and Benefits
Pay: [range and hourly or salary basis].
Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when they start].
10. Company Culture and Overview
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, the area you serve, and the support a new bookkeeper gets in the first 90 days.]
11. How to Apply
[Apply link or email]. Our process: [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
Need help filling this role? HireBus posts the ad, Iris interviews every applicant by phone before you do, and you decide who to hire. Start hiring now
Any contractor's bookkeeper bills jobs and pays suppliers. Here one customer can owe on three kinds of work, a utility may pay part of the bill, and the heaviest billing months sit on top of year-end.
The rebate check may not come to you
On a retrofit, part of the price often comes from the customer's utility, and each program decides who gets the check. Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric in Minnesota prefers to pay its business member directly under its 2026 lighting program. A third party can be named only with the member's signed authorization, and the form warns that such a payment may be disallowed. Read the payee rule before the invoice goes out, then bill the full price or the net to match who the utility will pay. Source: Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric: 2026 retrofit lighting rebate info and application.
Takedown belongs to last season
Holiday takedowns often run into January, after the old year has ended. Code that takedown labor, the truck time and any lift rental to the season's job, not to a new one. If you don't, the fall install looks richer than it was and January looks like a loss. Repair visits on a lit display in December go to the same job.
Every deposit needs a season on it
A customer may pay this fall's deposit while still owing for last winter's takedown. Post each payment to the invoice for a named season, never to the oldest open balance by default. Ask sales to print the season on every holiday contract and renewal so a payment can't land on the wrong year, and so the CFO's season reports hold up.
Federal work brings weekly certified payroll
Davis-Bacon labor terms go into any federal construction contract above 2,000 dollars, and alteration and repair work such as a retrofit counts. Some jobs paid partly with federal money carry them too. On covered work, the contractor must submit certified payrolls weekly, for each week any covered work is done. Set up the job code and load the wage rates from the contract's wage determination before the first shift, so crew hours on that site are tracked apart from your other jobs. Source: eCFR: 29 CFR 5.5, contract provisions and certified payroll requirements.
How much lighting installation bookkeepers make
The closest BLS group for lighting installation bookkeepers is bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks. Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks who work for electrical contractors earned a median of $27.13 an hour ($56,430 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s above the $50,670 median for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks in all industries. About 14,200 of the 1,373,680 bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks in that survey work for electrical contractors.
Usually paid hourly. Plan for overtime from October through January, when holiday billing and the year-end close land together.
Electrical contractors
$56,430$56,430 median Middle half $45,760–$66,130 10th–90th $35,920–$77,420
All industries
$50,670$50,670 median Middle half $43,520–$61,470 10th–90th $36,000–$74,550
$30k$40k$50k$60k$70k$80k$90k
10th–90th percentileMiddle halfMedianAnnual pay, May 2025. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Annual pay by percentile
Group
10th
25th
Median
75th
90th
Electrical contractors
$35,920
$45,760
$56,430
$66,130
$77,420
All industries
$36,000
$43,520
$50,670
$61,470
$74,550
BLS doesn’t publish pay for lighting installers on their own. These figures cover electrical contractors, which include them. Post a real range for your market in the ad.
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Full-cycle bookkeeping at a contractor, including progress billing
Job costing that splits labor, materials and rentals by job
Applying deposits and partial payments to the right invoice
Polite, steady collection calls to businesses and property managers
Accurate entry when holiday invoices pile up
Teach these on the job
Your utilities' rebate programs and who each one pays
How jobs flow from your field app into the books
How your holiday programs are priced and billed
Certified payroll for federal jobs
Your state's tax treatment of contractor materials
Many lighting companies pair QuickBooks or Sage with a field service app such as ServiceTitan or Jobber, so a closed job becomes an invoice without retyping. Expect a shared rebate tracker, the lift rental company's online invoice account, and the bank's deposit portal.
Two of the 6 questions we'd ask, and what a strong answer sounds like. Ask every candidate the same questions, and rate each answer on your own before you compare notes.
Situational · Disputing vendor charges
A lift rental company bills [three] extra days on a retrofit job, and the crew says the lift was called off on time. What do you do?
A strong answer: Gets the off-rent confirmation from dispatch, disputes the charge with documentation, holds payment on the difference and codes the final amount to the job.
Behavioral · Accurate job costing
Tell me about a time you found costs coded to the wrong job, such as lift rentals or product for a different retrofit.
A strong answer: Noticed a pattern in job reports, traced the entries, corrected them and fixed the coding step that caused it.
The template leaves the targets blank on purpose. Base each one on what your books showed in earlier holiday seasons, not on a year-round trade's figures.
Days from job closeout to invoice
Count the days between the crew's closeout in the field software and the invoice date. Report retrofits, landscape jobs and holiday installs on separate lines, since each closes out differently.
Receivables past due
Pull the aging report each week and split it by homeowners, businesses and property managers. Keep rebate money owed by utilities in its own group, apart from customers.
Bills coded to the correct job
Each month, sample fixture, rental and supply bills and check each job code against the purchase order and crew time. Count how many needed a correction.
Rebate payments tracked to receipt
List every rebate assigned to the company with its program, amount and date submitted. Measure how many carry a current status note and how many arrived without a chase.
Career path
Office assistantHandles invoices and payments as part of the front office.
BookkeeperKeeps the books, job costs and rebate tracking for every service line.
Accounting managerLeads the monthly close and a small staff as the company adds branches.
CFO / AccountantPlans cash, credit and pricing for the whole company.
Who chases a late utility rebate, the bookkeeper or the office manager?
Split it by stage. The office manager builds and submits the application and answers the program's questions. Once the program approves it, the bookkeeper records what's owed and watches for the money. When a payment runs late, the bookkeeper flags it and the office manager calls the program, since they know the file. A shared tracker with one row per rebate keeps both from calling twice.
How much does a lighting installation bookkeeper make?
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks who work for electrical contractors earned a median of $27.13 an hour ($56,430 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $45,760 and $66,130 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and overtime.
How do I test a bookkeeper candidate for a lighting company?
Hand them a short packet: an August holiday deposit from a customer who still owes for last January's takedown, a lift rental bill that covers two jobs, and a utility rebate approval for a retrofit. Ask them to post all three and walk you through the entries. You'll see how they think about seasons, job costs and money owed by someone other than the customer.
What does the bookkeeper template mean by lifting file boxes?
It means moving paper now and then: carrying boxes of closed job files and old holiday contracts to storage, pulling a box when a customer disputes an old invoice, and bringing deliveries of forms and supplies to the desk. Everything else in the job is screen work. The weight in the template is a fill-in, so set it to what your boxes really weigh, and offer reasonable accommodation.
Should the bookkeeper also run payroll for the holiday crews?
The template has the bookkeeper prepare payroll inputs, not run payroll. That split helps in fall, when seasonal hires start every week. HR enters new hires and pay rates, crew leads approve hours, and the bookkeeper checks the totals against job time before the payroll service processes them. Keeping the person who adds employees apart from the person who approves pay protects you from errors and fraud.
