An Open Letter To Contractors Who Make Their Wives Do The Bookkeeping

There is a storm brewing on the horizon and I have to address it before it is too late in an effort to help save a few good marriages. Lately there has been a surge of contractor's spouses who have left and filed for divorce and a lot more are on the edge. Girlfriends do not have as many reasons to stay so they usually pack up and leave early.

I came dangerously close to having lost my wife in divorce from having insisted she do all of construction accounting for our construction company. You can listen to my story by clicking on the podcast below:

 was very blessed and extremely fortunate to have met a wonderful woman in high school, Sharie, and we married the year after we graduated while I was attending college majoring in accounting.

As it happened I was raised in a family that earned a living as contractors. Sharie and I spent many years working side-by-side starting, owning and operating several construction companies so this article comes from the heart as someone who lived it.

One fine sunny day in 1991 after I had been especially arrogant and short-tempered Sharie said to me: "Enough is enough! You need to get somebody else to do the contractor bookkeeping because I am done!" That was a serious wake-up-call...

Suddenly I had a major problem and needed to develop a Contractors Bookkeeping Services System because using QuickBooks as a check register was not going to work especially since I needed to hire a bookkeeper right away.

In six short months I developed a simple rudimentary contractors bookkeeping system which has evolved to the professional contractors bookkeeping services system it is now and I sincerely believe it helped save our marriage and perhaps could help save yours too!

Here is what I see repeated many times over. Contractors cross the line and begin treating their spouses as indentured servants who should be grateful for a place to live, food to eat and a bed to sleep in exchange for:

Providing The Critical Contractor Accounting Services Which Incudes:

• Job Cost Reports
• Financial Reports
• Processing Payroll
• Filing Monthly And Quarterly Tax Returns
• Balancing The Checkbooks
• Filling Out Loan Applications
• Tracking Employee Loans
• Issuing Invoices To Your Customers
• Riding Herd Over Your Subcontractors
• Working With Suppliers And Vendors
• Keeping Track Of The Bills
• Paying The Bills
• Reconciling The Checking, Savings And Credit Card Accounts
• And Several Dozen More Construction Accounting Chores

This Is In Addition To Maintaining A Household Which Includes:

• Doing the shopping
• Being the chief cook and bottle washer
• Running dozens of errands
• Taking care of the children and pets
• Laundry, folding and putting away clean clothes
• Playing nurse when a family member is sick
• Planning and preparing for holidays, birthdays anniversaries and other special events
• And juggling dozens of other chores and tasks

After a while all spouses get worn out, run down, frustrated, depressed, and emotional. In extreme cases desperate enough to take radical actions to relieve the unbearable pain even to the point of suicide.

In most cases you, the contractor, are not at fault; because you are being hammered by customers who are doing everything they can to drive the price of everything and everyone into the ground in what they see as a battle and a twisted attempt to get something for nothing, dare I say entitlement? I have a suggestion how to fix that later in this article.

Here Are The Dirty Dozen Issues Your Wife Is Facing:

#01 You do not understand there is a world of difference between construction accounting and regular accounting. If you would like to learn about what makes construction accounting different from regular accounting please visit www.FastEasyAccounting.com/ca

#02 You start the business and ask your wife to "do the books" saying "It should only take 10 minutes a day” and not knowing any better she agrees with you.

#03 Very quickly she begins to realize she is in trouble and way over her head because she doesn't understand construction accounting let alone how it can be done in “10 minutes a day”.

#04 Her resentment toward you starts to build inside her like a small camp fire and grows into a raging wild forest fire as she is faced with the prospect of feeling a failure because she let you down or perhaps feeling like she lied to you about being able to handle the contractor bookkeeping services. Now she is concerned you may begin to doubt her honesty and her worth as a person.

#05 She does not know that it takes 10,000 hours of training and practice to become skilled in regular accounting let alone the additional 10,000 hours of training and practice required to become a highly skilled construction bookkeeper and another long grueling set of years of training and practice that it takes to become a construction accountant.

#06 Worse yet if she has any experience in regular accounting then she is lead to believe that construction accounting is no different that is recipe for disaster.

#07 She is deathly afraid of filling out the dozens of state, federal and local tax forms that need to be filed every year. What if there is an audit? What if she paid too much tax, too little tax, filed a return late? The taxes will not bankrupt you but the fines and penalties can and it will all be blamed on her.

#08 She has to constantly ask you and your construction workers for paperwork and you say "stop nagging me and the other employees" which causes hurt feelings for everyone involved.

#09 All day your spouse is being interrupted while trying to get the bookkeeping done. Friends and neighbors call or drop by to visit. Customers call about when you will be at their house to finish their job, suppliers calling for money, kids need lunch, rides to activities and on it goes.

#10 Frantic invoicing issues as you remember you need to send an Invoice to a customer to get paid and you forgot so you add that to her overloaded workday.

#11 You ask for Financial and Job Cost Reports and get upset when she says they are not ready. What she is really saying is "I don't know to generate accurate reports" which causes more tension and hurt feelings for both of you.

#12 When you do get Financial and Job Cost Reports your first response is to argue with them and blame your wife for not getting them right. You say "There is no way we are that far in debt" or "What do you mean that last job didn't make any money?" "I needed that new truck and now you are telling me we are out of money". Continual hurt feelings make her numb then she slides into depression which turns into despair and finally the love is gone.

I could go on for many more pages and never cover all of the reasons making your wife do your construction accounting was the reason they gave up asked for a divorce.

The answer is simple. We have helped save a lot of marriages by working with contractor’s wives and showing them how to do the things they are good at like managing the money, paying the bills, customer service and other management tasks and letting us take care of the contractors bookkeeping services.

Most of the time the contractor ends up making more money because everyone does what they are good at doing and they have 24/7 access to all of the reports they could ever want with our web based contractors bookkeeping services financial reporting tool.

We Remove Contractor's Unique Paperwork Frustrations

For Construction Company Owners who do not need the full power of QuickBooks for contractors and want 24/7 online access we offer Xero Accounting Online and we have custom setup for construction companies. Click Here For More.

This Is One More Example of how Fast Easy Accounting is helping construction company owners all across the USA including Alaska and Hawaii put more money in the bank to operate and grow your construction company. Construction accounting is not rocket science; it is a lot harder than that and a lot more valuable to people like you so stop missing out! Call Sharie 206-361-3950 or sharie@fasteasyaccounting.com and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation. 

Profitable Contractors and Construction Company owners have known about the value of outsourced bookkeeping services and contractor coaching services like ours for a long time and now you know about it too! 

We Scan Your Receipts And Invoices link the appropriate transactions to QuickBooks or Xero Accounting Online depending on the construction accounting service you are using and provide ongoing Cloud Based Contractors Bookkeeping Services by accountants who understand construction.

Our Contractor Bookkeeping Services System Is A System

Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services To Save Time And Money?

Click On The Button Below To Download A Free Guide 

Business Process Management (BPM) For Contractors

Need Help Now?

Call Sharie 206-361-3950

sharie@fasteasyaccounting.com

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