The government contract accounting fundamentals behind every pricing, profitability, and valuation decision.
Robert E. Jones, CPA, draws on twenty three years of DoD focused government contract accounting to show owners how compliance, indirect rates, and pricing decisions connect directly to profitability and long term enterprise value.
Profitable does not mean the numbers hold up under audit, or under a buyer's diligence.
Revenue alone does not create enterprise value. It depends on the government contract accounting underneath it holding up.
Compliance
What FAR and DFARS actually require, written in plain language, so owners understand the rules their accounting system has to follow.
Pricing
How indirect rate structures translate into a price the government will accept and a margin the business can actually keep.
Profitability
A contractor can be profitable on paper and starved for cash. The book explains why, and what to track instead.
Enterprise Value
Rate structures and financial discipline are among the first things a buyer's diligence team will pull apart. This is how to build them so they hold.
Four ideas that carry the whole guide
Each chapter builds on the last, from compliance basics to what a buyer will actually test.
Compliance as a foundation
Government contract accounting runs on its own rules, separate from commercial GAAP practice. The book explains what a compliant system looks like, and why getting it right early costs far less than fixing it later.
Building rates you can defend
Indirect rate pools, bases, and the fringe through G&A cascade, explained the way an owner needs to understand them: enough to ask sharp questions, and enough to defend the rates under audit.
Reading what the numbers say
Revenue growth can mask a business quietly losing money on every contract. The book teaches owners to read profitability signals correctly, including the gap between a healthy income statement and healthy cash.
Turning discipline into value
Buyers and successors do not pay for revenue. They pay for a business whose numbers they can trust without the founder in the room to explain them. That trust starts with the accounting.
The book teaches the discipline behind indirect rates. Rate Studio is where you run the numbers.
Every rate concept in the book, fringe, intermediate, overhead, MSOH, and G&A, follows the same cascade Rate Studio calculates. The book builds the understanding. Rate Studio removes the spreadsheet that used to hold that understanding together.
Rate Studio
Indirect rate calculation, restructured. Map your pools and bases once, then calculate against that structure for as long as the work requires.
- Built for the cascade the book explains
- Audit-ready documentation on every rate
- Your data stays on your own machine
Robert E. Jones, CPA, CPCM
Robert has spent twenty three years focused on DoD related government contract accounting, working directly with founders and controllers on the compliance, pricing, and profitability questions this book addresses. He has delivered more than 150 webinars and numerous conference presentations on GovCon accounting topics, and is a recipient of multiple NCMA national awards.
He is the founder and Principal Advisor of Corvata, an advisory firm that helps founder-led government contractors build businesses that operate, scale, and transfer without depending on any one person, including the founder.
NCMA Fellow · CPA · CPCM
Get the guide that connects your accounting to what your business is actually worth.
Government Contract Accounting Made Easy is available now on Amazon in paperback. Read it before your next proposal, your next audit, or your next conversation about where your business is headed.
