What sport do you relate your construction accounting to?

It all looks easy from the bleachers and benches watching the game

Are you thinking Major League, Minor League or just hanging out with your friends for a friendly game on the weekends? Sometimes the best of intentions have unintended consequences. 

Setting Up QuickBooks – DIY Setup

Open the box and load it on your desktop.

What’s next – talk to all your friends trying to decide what to do.

You decide it’s cheaper to do it all yourself

Your Reasoning: "I need to learn how the program works."

You go back to the computer:

Open QuickBooks

Complete the easy step interview

Enable all of the features

Your Reasoning:  "The options are in QuickBooks software and to get my money’s worth I must use everything."

Purchase Orders / Sales Orders / Inventory / Class Tracking / Enabled Online Features / except Payroll and Merchant Services (those cost money) / Sync’d with Estimating Software – And QuickBooks advertisements make it is easy and quick too!

"I don’t have to double key anything into my QuickBooks."

Time Flies:  It's June / It's August / It's October and now you are beginning to review the QuickBooks reports…….

You “Winged The Department of Revenue Sales Tax Report

But Now You Need To Do Something Quick!

Why is everything messed up? My checkbook is balanced – I downloaded from the bank but the transactions look funny. My accounts receivable is off / My accounts payable is off / My inventory isn’t right / My QuickBooks is a mess – And I don’t understand any of the reports. 

To make it easier to understand - Let’s do a quick comparison between general accounting and sports. Many sports are like basketball, soccer, football, etc. where the rules allow anyone can score the point. This is general accounting anyone on the field can take the ball (or QuickBooks file) and run.    

Construction Accounting is like Baseball there is a specific sequence in the way the game is played.

In both cases, the professional teams hire professional players who have practiced, practiced and practiced some to develop their skills. 

Same is in Contraction Accounting a non-professional may not be as helpful to the end result no matter how well intentioned based on their skill level.  

Value of Accounting – Contractors want to have good reports

Why? So Contractors know what is happening in their business (job costing) and hopefully pay less tax.

Old saying……"I didn’t have enough time and money to do it right the first time, but I can always find the time and money to do it over!"

Cost of Accounting:  Quote from a contractor “My wife doesn’t cost me anything to do the books.” Perhaps that is one of the reasons contractors end up divorced so often. Click here to read all about it.

Cost of Accounting:  Quote from a contractor “I paid all this money and my books are not right. I shouldn’t have to pay for it all over again” Followed by – "I want you to give me a credit for all of the money I have already paid." How often do you give a customer a discount equal to the money they paid another contractor to fix what should have been done right the first time?

Accounting Services are not a transferrable warranty issue from accountant to accountant

Cost of Services A Contractor's Story. Quote from homeowner who after an agreement was reached, contracts signed, deposit made before final payment tried one more time to re-negotiate the price. 

Homeowner's explanation: “It’s in my nature, I must try to see if there is an additional bargain” Quote from the contractor “It is in my nature as an American to try and give you the best possible service, at the best possible price and value I can for that service. So, no you cannot have an additional discount.” Homeowner dropped from being a good Client to a bad Customer in a matter of minutes.

What type of client do you service? What type of client are you to other professionals? 

Calling Fast Easy Accounting is the answer. We Help…..”A Little” or “A Lot” depending on your needs. With our customized Chart of Accounts we can setup your QuickBooks file, cleanup adjusting transactions. Some of the cleanup is easy, other parts are complex...The good news is we know what to do. 

The twisted pretzel in construction accounting is when estimating and scheduling programs are used as the primary accounting software and synced with QuickBooks.  In most cased add-on software simply does not work with QuickBooks for contractors because in our experience it ignores basic accounting principles and causes havoc with QuickBooks entries when altering Inventory, non-inventory and billable invoices.   

We have been involved in hundreds of cases where add-on software was used to make QuickBooks "better" and the cleanup was very expensive because it takes a skilled Construction Accountant time to properly unravel and correct the underlying data which affects all of the QuickBooks reports. 

Results: It may have only taken you 10 minutes to create group of unusable reports with incorrect balances; however, it takes “A Lot” more time, a steady hand and knowledge to fix it. And yes we can fix almost any QuickBooks setup and contractor bookkeeping services issue. The ones we cannot fix we have other alternatives like starting a clean QuickBooks for Contractor file and importing the good transactions.

QuickBooks Expert Specializing In Construction Bookkeeping Services

About The Author:

Sharie DeHart, QPA is the co-founder of Business Consulting And Accounting in Lynnwood Washington. She is the leading expert in managing outsourced construction bookkeeping and accounting services companies and cash management accounting for small construction companies across the USA. She encourages Contractors and Construction Company Owners to stay current on their tax obligations and offers insights on how to manage the remaining cash flow to operate and grow their construction company sales and profits so they can put more money in the bank. http://www.fasteasyaccounting.com/sharie-dehart/