Roofing Slow Season Checklist: Close the Season’s Paperwork Before the Year Ends

The season-end list: six queues to clear

Each queue below is read from records the company already keeps: the roofing CRM, the photo app, QuickBooks, supplier invoices and drop tickets. Each one gets an owner by role and a date to be cleared.

• Finished roofs with no final invoice. Every job marked Complete this season with no invoice date. On retail work, this is money nobody has asked for. On insurance work, the held depreciation waits on it too, wherever the carrier’s letter asks for a final invoice.
• Final invoice sent, held depreciation not yet released. Insurance jobs with a final invoice but no certificate of completion on file, or no record of what was sent and when. Read the carrier’s letter for what it asks the policyholder to send; do not interpret the policy.
• Deductible receipts. In Texas, Insurance Code §707.004 lets an insurer refuse to pay withheld recoverable depreciation until it receives reasonable proof that the policyholder paid any applicable deductible: a canceled check, a money order receipt, a credit card statement, or a financing contract that requires full payment over time. Florida’s §627.7011(3)(a) allows the same for the roof portion when a roof deductible applies. The receipt belongs in the closeout file. A deductible is never waived.
• Checks at the mortgage company. Two-party checks in a loss-draft department, with the package the servicer asked for and the date of the next inspection. For a loan serviced under Fannie Mae’s Servicing Guide that is current or under 31 days delinquent, the servicer may release an initial disbursement up to the greater of $40,000 or 33 percent of the proceeds and release the rest on periodic inspections of the repairs; at 31 days or more delinquent, the steps shrink to increments of no more than 25 percent. A job can be finished and still have money waiting on an inspection nobody scheduled.
• Decking, extras and returns. Sheets of decking on the supplier invoice and drop tickets against sheets on the final invoice or on whatever went to the supplement writer; returned bundles against credits actually posted to the job.
• Commissions figured too early. Commission paid at completion, before the supplement landed, the return posted or the dumpster bill arrived. Recompute each one on the closed job cost and write down how adjustments will be handled.

The list is the same for a three-crew company and a ten-crew one. Only the number of lines changes.

The clocks that keep running over the winter

Some of these queues have deadlines set by law or by the policy, and those deadlines run whether or not the office is busy. The examples below come from public statutes read on October 17, 2026. They are examples, not a general deadline; the policy and the carrier’s letters state the limit for a given claim, and the claim belongs to the homeowner. Ask your construction attorney how any of it applies to a specific job.

• California. Insurance Code §2051.5(b)(1) bars a time limit of less than 12 months from the first actual-cash-value payment for an insured to collect the full replacement cost, and less than 36 months when the loss relates to a declared state of emergency. Under §2051.5(b)(2), the insurer must grant six-month extensions for good cause when delays are beyond the insured’s control, such as permit delays, a lack of materials or no contractor available to do the work.
• Florida. Under §627.70132, notice of an initial or reopened property claim is barred unless given within one year after the date of loss, and notice of a supplemental claim within 18 months after the date of loss. Under §627.70131(7)(a), the insurer must pay or deny an initial, reopened or supplemental claim, or a portion of it, within 60 days after receiving notice of it.

The office’s part is narrow and practical: know which finished jobs still have a document outstanding, and make sure the contractor’s own documents — the final invoice, the certificate of completion, the photos — reach the homeowner, and wherever else the homeowner directs, well inside whatever window applies. A supplement found in December on a Florida roof from a spring storm is closer to its 18-month line than it looks. Not legal advice.

How to run the season-end count from the company’s own records

The count needs one export from the roofing CRM: every job completed this season, with its completion date, whether it is insurance or retail, the final invoice date and, for insurance jobs, the certificate-of-completion date. Then add columns by hand from QuickBooks deposits, supplier statements and the commission sheet.

• Days from completion to final invoice, for every job.
• For insurance jobs: certificate of completion sent (date), deductible received (date and form of proof), held depreciation released (date and amount).
• For two-party checks: date the loss-draft package went to the servicer, date of the last inspection, amount still held.
• Decking sheets bought against sheets billed; returns sent against credits posted.
• Commission paid against commission owed on the closed job cost.
• An owner and a next date for every open line.

Illustrative example: a company finishes 120 roofs between April and October, 60 of them insurance claims. Fifty-one insurance jobs have a final invoice and a certificate-of-completion date. Nine do not: four waited on back-ordered gutters, three were marked Complete with no paperwork step at all, and two wait on a deductible receipt. At an illustrative $5,000 of held depreciation each, that is $45,000 still with the carriers because a document has not gone out, before counting loss drafts, decking or commission true-ups. The three with no step at all are the cheapest to fix.

Before the CPA closes the year

The year-end close is the CPA’s work, and the timing of income is a tax question this guide does not answer. IRS Publication 538 sets out the two common methods. Under the cash method, income counts when it is actually or constructively received, and an amount is constructively received “when an amount is credited to your account or made available to you without restriction.” Under the accrual method, income counts in the year when all events have occurred that fix the right to receive it and the amount can be determined with reasonable accuracy. Which method applies, and what that means for a job finished in December, is for the CPA.

What the office can do is hand the CPA a complete picture. A job that was never invoiced shows up nowhere in the books, under either method. The season-end list gives the accountant what the books cannot: completed and not invoiced, invoiced and not collected split by who holds the money (the carrier, the mortgage company or the homeowner), and the commission adjustments made after the fact.

Who owns each line next season

A season-end cleanup that has to be repeated every winter is a symptom. The fix is to give each queue an owner and a trigger during the season, so the slow months start with a short list instead of a long one.

• A “Final invoice + COC sent” field on the job, filled by whoever moves the card to Complete, with the date.
• The deductible receipt as a closeout document, collected by the office with the final invoice.
• A “waiting on servicer” queue in receivables, with the inspection date and the person who asked for it.
• Decking and returns matched to the job before the final invoice goes out.
• Commission figured on closed job cost, with a written rule for supplements and returns.
• A Friday list of every job Complete with any of the above missing, read aloud by name.

When should roofing salesmen get their commission: at signing, at completion, or when the money is collected?

Pay the final commission when the job cost is closed and the money is collected, because that is the only point where the number stops moving. At signing, the price can still change through a cancellation, a supplement, added decking or a return. At completion, the roof is on, but the final invoice, the deductible and, on insurance work, held depreciation can still be outstanding. A commission paid before then is the commission version of the season-end problem above: a number figured twice.

Waiting for every last check moves risk onto the rep for steps the rep does not control, such as a late final invoice from the office or a mortgage company’s inspection. A split schedule answers that: an advance at an earlier milestone that does not depend on the office or the lender, and the balance when job cost closes and the money clears. Whichever schedule the company picks, write it down with the rule for cancellations, supplements, returns and unpaid balances.

In California that is the law: a contract of employment involving commissions, for work in that state, must be in writing and set out the method by which commissions are computed and paid. When a commission counts as earned and what is owed after a rep leaves depend on the written agreement and on state wage law; ask the company’s employment attorney.

• At signing. The FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule gives a buyer until midnight of the third business day to cancel certain sales of $25 or more made at the buyer’s home, and counts Saturday as a business day. A commission paid that day can be paid on a sale that is canceled.
• At completion. On an insurance roof, the held depreciation waits on the final paperwork described at the top of this guide, so completion is when that paperwork starts, not when it ends.
• At collection. The commission is figured once, on closed job cost and cash received, with supplements and returns already in.
• A split, for example: half when the cancellation window has closed and the job is scheduled, the balance when job cost closes and the last check clears. The halves are an illustration, not a recommendation.

When not to hire anyone for the season close

For a one-crew company where the owner writes and sends every final invoice personally, the count above is an afternoon with a spreadsheet, and nothing in it needs outside help. The same goes for a larger company whose Friday list is already short and carries a reason on every line.

Some questions belong to other people. Whether a deadline has passed on a specific claim, or what a contract allows, is for the company’s construction attorney. Taxes and the year-end close are the CPA’s. Disputes over what a carrier owes are between the homeowner and the carrier, and in Texas a contractor doing the work may not act as the homeowner’s public adjuster. We never contact carriers, adjusters, mortgage servicers or homeowners, never interpret coverage and never write a supplement.

It is worth a second look from a roofing business consultant when the list is long, when the most common reason on it is “nobody knew,” or when the company cannot say how much of its receivables waits on the carrier, the mortgage company and the homeowner. The Revenue Review is a read-only engagement of two weeks. It reads the roofing CRM against QuickBooks, supplier invoices and the supplement log, counts each of the six queues above with a monthly dollar figure wherever the records support one, and ends in a written report with a ranked fix list and a 90-day plan the office can put in place over the winter. A free 20-minute call is enough to tell whether a Review fits.