The time flies between each of the holidays. It is a time to reflect on the years so far and catch up.   
The magical time of year begins with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas then finally New Year’s Eve.

Picking A Get Me By Contractor’s Bookkeeping Solution in many cases is using an Excel Spreadsheet and a shoebox, file folders all dumped into a file box and looking at the Online Banking once in a while. This accounting method is the “I still got money so I must be okay.”

Contractor CFO’s Struggle To Achieve Good QuickBooks Reports

Contractor CFO’s are in a constant struggle between having all of the documents needed for data entry and providing the tools for the Office Manager | Bookkeeper need to do the job.

Owners want answers to the following questions

Am I making any money?

Where am I making any money?

Why isn’t there a report that at the push of the button gives me all the answers?

When Your Company Was New, The Answers Were Not As Important As They Are Now

You are a small contractor who needs an Admin Assistant to answer your phone, so you hire someone for your contracting company office.

Calls come in, and your Admin Assistant has some free time between calls, so you want to make use of that famous Standby Time, and you ask them to do a little more. Being nice; you give a new title of Office Manager.  

As the Office Manager; that person is in control of the bookkeeping, customer invoices, vendor payments and more. As the contractor, you are excited because you are handing off the responsibility for the day to day activities.

From your side; you have checked off the box called Office Manger DONE, phones DONE, bookkeeping DONE and material pickup and delivery person DONE. Everything is solved. Good now you can go back to work and start doing the work which is the part you are good at and like to do.  

Are you expecting Too Much from your Office Manager?

Mad Dash To The End Of The Year And I Can’t Remember Last Week

Let Alone January, April, July’s Stuff!

The year is almost over. It is now the (4th) Quarter and year end deadlines are approaching.

Have you given your bookkeeper, wife, partner), accountant or tax accountant the information need to complete your reports. Accountants need good information to be able to create detailed reports and save money on your taxes.

Here is truly where the expression “Garbage In Equals Garbage Out” comes into play.  It is impossible to create Job Costing Reports when all anyone knows is the amount of a deposit on the bank statement.   
 
It’s the Mad Dash To The End Of The Year as a contractor recently described their Year End Madness to get his documents ready for the Tax Accountant.

Are You In This Cycle Of Chaos Too? It’s Preventable!

The First Question You May Ask Yourself Is

Why Doesn’t My Tax Accountant Help Me With Job Costing?

They are Tax Accountants, not Construction Accountants and may not know the answers. You may think they are just keeping it a secret. Sometimes you may think they don’t know what they are doing, and maybe I need to get a new tax accountant.  

My Advice is Stop, take a deep breath. Is your tax accountant doing a good job with your annual taxes? If the answer is YES. Please keep them, they are doing what they are supposed to do.

The First Question You May Ask Yourself Is

Why Doesn’t My Tax Accountant Help Me With Job Costing?

They are Tax Accountants, not Construction Accountants and may not know the answers. You may think they are just keeping it a secret. Sometimes you may think they don’t know what they are doing, and maybe I need to get a new tax accountant.  

My Advice is Stop, take a deep breath. Is your tax accountant doing a good job with your annual taxes? If the answer is YES. Please keep them, they are doing what they are supposed to do.

Experts Have Increased Knowledge And Skills. This is true whether you are talking about general bookkeeping, tax accountants, your mechanic, your doctor or other business professionals.