Your Construction Company was a bit disorganized and there were piles of paper on the dashboard of your truck, behind the seat, on the passenger seat, on the floor, in every pocket of you coat, shirt, pants, inside your lunch box and piled high on your desk or kitchen table?
You bought QuickBooks thinking it would solve all your paperwork issues and your contractor bookkeeping issues? Instead you found yourself in a bigger mess and deeper hole than ever because QuickBooks is anything but Quick!
QuickBooks advertisements made it seem so simple that even a child could setup QuickBooks in less than an hour. So you thought I can do this; I can setup QuickBooks for my construction company and it will automatically sort all of the paperwork and do all of the accounting for your Contracting Company in 10 minutes a day or less.
QuickBooks sells software to contractors a little bit like Home Depot sells material to "Weekend Warrior Homeowners" who think they can save time and money by doing construction projects themselves.
Home Depot generates a ton of leads for contractors by putting on Home Depot Free Weekly Workshops & Home Improvement Workshops.
Can a homeowner "Learn To Paint Like A Professional", "Get The Skills To Install A Toilet", "Learn The Skills To Install A Backsplash" or "Install A Light Fixture" in a 90 minute class? Of course not!
Does Home Depot sell a lot of material and supplies with this brilliant marketing idea? Of course they do! What normally happens is the homeowner attends the workshop in the morning, buys the parts, goes home, tries installing them, runs into trouble and then calls you!
The same thing happens when contractors buy QuickBooks and try setting up QuickBooks using the Easy Step Interview. You waste a lot of time, money, blood, sweat and tears and end up with a mess and you live with it until the pain becomes unbearable, then you seek professional help.
Or worse yet you hire a Cheap Bookkeeper who thinks they know how to setup QuickBooks for Contractors. By the time you figure out they know nothing about Construction Accounting it is too late.
They have driven your Contracting Company off the highway of success into the ditch of destruction, turned it upside down, poured gasoline on it, lighted it on fire, walked away, told everyone that you don't know how to run a business and you are left stranded on the side of the highway, eyes wide open, with tear stained cheeks watching in horror as everything you have worked for goes up in smoke!
I Love QuickBooks and have used it since it was released as QuickBooks 1.0 DOS® in the early 1992 for roughly $100 and it was ten times better than the custom built Construction Accounting Software that cost us over $60,000 which we were using for our construction companies and doing the accounting for few contractors that we were providing bookkeeping services.
There was a bit of a learning curve; however, having a background in construction with a specialty in construction accounting I was able to make QuickBooks work for us. Today we have an entire system to Setup QuickBooks for any Contractor with annual sales between $0 to $10,000,000.
Fast forward to 2000 when we sold our last construction company and began focusing on growing our Outsourced Contractors Bookkeeping Service is when we really poured a lot of blood, sweat and tears into developing our Contractor Bookkeeping System.
A key part of this Contractor Bookkeeping System was developing a QuickBooks Template that could be used by small Construction Companies from startup to $10,000,000 annual revenue including:
The biggest challenge was that we understood the difference between Construction Accounting and Regular Accounting at a deep level. Which means we knew why QuickBooks out of the box was not designed to work well with Contractors.
We knew that if we committed enough time, money and resources we could develop our own Customizable QuickBooks For Contractors Template with all of the Chart of Accounts, Item Lists and other enhancements that would work well for any small Construction Company All Across The USA Including Alaska And Hawaii.
Here we are several decades later and our Customizable QuickBooks For Contractors Template is working great and we continue to add dozens of minor enhancements every year.
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.
About The Author:
Our Co-Founder Randal DeHart - Is a Certified PMP (Project Management Professional) with several years of construction project management experience. His expertise is construction accounting systems engineering and process development. His exhaustive study of several leading experts including the work of Dr. W. Edward Deming, Michael Gerber, Walter A. Shewhart, James Lewis and dozens of others was the foundation upon which our Construction Bookkeeping System is based and continues to evolve and improve. Check out our Contractor Success Map Podcast on iTunes and Follow Randal on Google+