If You Own A Construction Company - Then you understand that construction bookkeeping is one of those mundane, nasty, dirty, aggravating, grubby little chores you get stuck with along with its rotten scoundrel cousin the Quarterly Tax Return.
Some Construction Company Owners - Decide their time is more valuable spent meeting prospective clients, putting together bids, managing jobsites and a whole lot of things other than construction bookkeeping. So they find someone else to do it which means finding someone who provides outsourced bookkeeping services.
Just Like There Are - Skilled construction company owners and not so skilled construction company owners there are Professional Bookkeepers and Bad Bookkeepers.
You Know How To - Tell if someone knows what they are doing in construction because you have been doing it a while.
You May Not Know - How to tell if someone is skilled in outsourced bookkeeping for contractors so here are the top ten things to watch out for:
Red Flag #1 Professionals Have An Office - Professionals in any field, doctors, lawyers, consultants and outsourced bookkeeping services that cannot afford to maintain an office, even a small one room office, outside their home is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous! Outsourced bookkeeping services that say something like "I keep my overhead low" may as well be saying "Your records are available to any of my family, friends and neighbors to rummage through them because I am not the least bit concerned about your exposure to Identity theft or to any of your competitors who are my friends and family that want to see what your construction company is all about."
Red Flag #2 Professionals Do Not Work Alone - Because it is too easy to get sloppy and lazy when there is nobody else looking over their work. After a while they develop a severe case of the stupids! Just like a hermit living in the mountains in a cabin they go stir crazy.
Red Flag #3 Professionals Accept Credit Cards - Wanna Bees don't and in a lot of cases it is because of bad credit score, business location, business setup, criminal record, (Perhaps embezzlement) and a whole lot of other reasons including the fact that it cost money to take credit and debit cards. Outsourced bookkeeping services for contractors who complain that it costs money to accept credit cards simply ask them if they use credit cards. If they say yes then ask yourself, "What are they really saying?" Respectable outsourced bookkeeping services take credit cards, debit cards and especially American Express!
Red Flag #4 Bad Bookkeeping - For a short list of Bad Bookkeeper Traits Click Here. Bad bookkeepers, incompetent bookkeepers and bookkeepers who train their boss like an organ grinder trains a monkey are on the top ten reasons construction company owners go broke! Bad bookkeeping leads to worthless financial reports which eventually destroy your construction company.
Red Flag #5 Hourly Billing Only - Professional Bookkeeping Services charge a flat monthly fee for services. Only someone who does not know what they are doing still charges by the hour. Any outsourced bookkeeping services for contractors that do not know how to calculate complex algorithms that take into account fluctuations in the workload and generate a monthly fee that is fair needs to attend some MBA level university classes and learn Decision Modeling, Statistical Analysis and Business Process Management.
Professional outsourced bookkeeping services have formulas for calculating fee structures. It is not rocket science:
How many employees do you have? From that we know how much time and effort will be required to process payroll and do the tax reports
What type of construction do you do? New, remodel, service, residential, commercial? From the number of employees and the type of work you do we know how much time and effort will be required to do all the bookkeeping, bank and vendor reconciliations and the rest. Because we have a System. Click Here To Learn About Our System
Red Flag #6 All Businesses Welcome - Gone is the day of the person sitting at the desk with green eyeshades handling the books for a variety of businesses. Construction company owners have tough competition and it is getting worse. You need someone who specializes in your industry that can guide and mentor you. If you are in the construction industry we can help. If you are in the restaurant industry, sorry, we cannot help you.
Red Flag #7 You Cannot See Your QuickBooks - Today more than ever you need to have remote access to your QuickBooks. Any outsourced bookkeeping service that cannot or will not let you have 24/7/365 remote access to your QuickBooks Desktop Version in a cloud based environment is doing you a disservice. Now if you do not want to see it that is O.K. too!
Red Flag #8 Combining Annual Tax Preparer And Bookkeeping - Bad, Bad, Bad....I have written several articles on this subject and you can Click Here For The Best One. A good rule of thumb is to understand that Financial Accounting which is what is needed for annual tax return preparation is not the same as Management Accounting which is what you need for Job Costing, Job Profitability, Budgeting, Forecasting and Business Process Management (BPM).
Red Flag #9 Unwilling To Collaborate - When your outsourced bookkeeping services firm is uncomfortable about other people being seeing your financial records you have a HUGE PROBLEM! Grab your QuickBooks contractor data file and RUN don't WALK to the nearest exit and ASAP call Sharie 206-361-3950 or email her at sharie@fasteasyaccounting.com
You need to Trust-But-Verify your outsourced bookkeeping services and all other professionals you depend upon. There are five people you need to have on your Board of Advisors and you are paying for their services anyway so you may as well take full advantage of them. They are there to help you.
Red Flag #10 They Do Not Understand Construction KPI - KPI is short for Key Performance Indicators also known as the Five Key Reports every contractor needs.
Profitable Construction - Companies have known about the value of outsourced bookkeeping services for a long time and now you know about it too!
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