Having used QuickBooks for 25+ years and helping 1,000's of contractors here are the top 9 reasons Contractors contact me since I am one of the few QuickBooks ProAdvisor specializing in Construction Accounting.

Do any of these scenarios sound like what you may be dealing with on a regular basis in your Construction Contracting company.

As a Contractor, you may have learned your trade from a skilled master craftsman or Journeyman that was your teacher and mentor for a few days to a few years. If you were fortunate, your mentor was someone who also learned from a skilled master craftsman or Journeyman, and they both had developed good habits of continually reading books, trade journals, attending seminars and paying for classroom instruction to keep themselves updated with the changes in their industry. Most Contractors don't want to waste time and energy being a "desk jockey".

Nine Reasons Contractors Outsource Bookkeeping To ProAdvisors

Reason #01 You may find QuickBooks isn’t giving you everything you need to operate and grow your Contracting Company.

Reason #02 Switching to QuickBooks gives is a good start, but a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, who understands the difference between regular accounting and construction accounting, can save you 100's hours of frustration, $1,000's of dollars in overpaid taxes and mishaps.

Reason #03 You want to get more out of QuickBooks, and you have heard your competitors brag how much QuickBooks has done for them, and you want some of that too!

Reason #04 You need Job Costs Reports.

Reason #05 Your Profit & Loss Report, Balance Sheet, and other

numbers look funny, or they are flat out wrong!

Reason #06 Your reports are worthless and outdated!

Reason #07 You have file management and security concerns. QuickBooks helps you collect, organize and report your data yet you may be worried about remote access, privacy and safety limitations.

Do you need to access QuickBooks from the office, home and when you are on the road? Is QuickBooks crashing and running slower lately?

Reason #08 You need more cash flow and profits to operate and grow your business you need to Optimize Vs. Maximize.

Reason #09 The final reason to work with A QuickBooks ProAdvisor specializing in construction Accounting is you don’t have to understand construction accounting or be intimidated by someone who does!

Listen to this Podcast for more…

If you are Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services you are invited to download a guide to finding the right contractor bookkeeping service to fit your particular situation at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

Call Sharie now 206-361-3950 or [email protected] and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation.

Have you been in business as a construction contractor or specialty contractor for a while and now you are wondering what your construction company is worth?

This question comes up early and often and perhaps you would like a bit of inside information that we share with our Outsourced Strategic Contractor Accounting Services Clients.

Nothing Is Ever As Good Or As Bad As It First Appears

If you are like most contractors you learned a trade, skill or craft and after a while you decided to go into business for yourself and make "The Big Bucks" and that was one of the happiest days of your life. I've heard It said that boat owners experience two of the happiest days of their lives; the day the bought their boat and the day they sold it.

There are two answers to the question what is my construction contracting company worth.

#1 Accounting Value:

Equity Which Is [Assets or What You Own] (Cash, Tools, Material, Loans The Company Made) - [Liabilities or What You Owe] Payables, Credit Card Balances) = [Equity or what is left Over].

#2 The Real World:

The real net worth of your construction contracting company is what someone else will pay you for it. There are 100's of factors that affect how much your construction company is worth.

Listen to this Podcast for more…

If you are Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services you are invited to download a guide to finding the right contractor bookkeeping service to fit your particular situation at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

Call Sharie now 206-361-3950 or [email protected] and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation.

Highly Successful Contractors Like Saving Money Where They Can

But Not On Cheap Tools, Equipment, Material, And Bookkeeping

Because That Always Costs Them Profit Dollars In The End

• Cheap tools break which slows the work down increases labor costs and in the end costs more than quality tools.

• Cheap equipment breaks down more often increases labor costs and also costs more than quality equipment.

• Cheap material is one of the causes for warranty work which drains profits and runs up labor and material costs.

• Cheap Contractor Bookkeeping can cost more than the previous three combined because of what you don't see.

The Cost Of Cheap Tools, Equipment And Material

Cheap Tools And Equipment - Cost a lot of money that you cannot see; out-of-sight means out-of-mind.

If Every Ten Minutes Your Construction Worker Costs You $5.94 then

the Construction Company loses $1,544.42 Each Year. At 10% Profit, You Need To Sell $15,544.20 More To Maintain Profit Margin.

For Example - Your best construction worker asks for a tool which costs $1,200.00, will save ten minutes a day in labor and last three years the most common response is "We can't afford it...make do with what you have...it is a poor craftsman who blames his or her tools".

When someone suggests "buying a tool to save money" most contractors hear "spend my hard earned money." These knee-jerk reactions come directly from the part of our brain called the "amygdala." It is what causes us to react to circumstances rather than respond them. It is also known as the "Fight or Flight" decision center. Break the cycle of "doing the same thing you have always done and got the same thing you have always gotten" by simply "Stopping And Thinking".

Cheap Contractor Bookkeeping

Until Your Construction Company - Reaches at least $5 million in annual sales you cannot afford to hire a qualified bookkeeper or construction accountant full-time to put on your accounting staff and don't be fooled; there is no such thing as a part-time qualified bookkeeper or construction accountant.

The True Cost Of A Cheap Bookkeeper At $15.00 Is Close To $25.29 Per Hour. For A Rough True Cost Of Your Bookkeeper Double, The Hourly Wage You Pay Them

Every Ten Minutes A Day Of Unproductive Office Labor Could Cost Your Company $273.93 Every Year. At 10% Profit, You Need $2,739.30 More Sales To Maintain Profit Margin.

Everybody Loses When A Contractor Goes Out Of Business Or Worse Yet Bankrupt!

Listen to this Podcast for more…

If you are Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services you are invited to download a guide to finding the right contractor bookkeeping service to fit your particular situation at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

Call Sharie now 206-361-3950 or [email protected] and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation.

You're A Smart Contractor, And You Know QuickBooks Has The Answers You Need To Operate And Grow Your Construction Company.

Every time you or your bookkeeper opens the darn thing, it sits there and does nothing. That's because QuickBooks is deaf and dumb! The people that developed QuickBooks are genius’s and I mean it because the products they put out are top drawer! When you understand they it was designed to be sold to all industries, not just my favorite, construction you begin to see the problem; it has tons of stuff contractors don't need.

QuickBooks Is Hard For Contractors Learn And Use. I know because the first ten years I yelled at it, slammed my fist on the desk, cussed it out, called it every name in the book, threatened it by beating keyboards until they shattered into a million pieces and I got a bloody fist.

To make matters worse not only do you need 10,000 Hours Practice To Master Strategic Construction Bookkeeping. And you need extraordinary skills in Project Management to wade through all of the apps to find ones that work with QuickBooks. Then you need a computer science laboratory to test them and tweak them to fit into a Construction Document Collection and Management System.

Four Features Contractors Need To Succeed

1. Online Download Bank And Credit Card Transactions And We Put Them Into QuickBooks

2. Online Time Tracking And Timecards Which We Put It In QuickBooks

3. Online Payroll And Tax Reporting Which We Put Into QuickBooks

4. Online Financial Management Reports Which We Put Into QuickBooks

Listen to this Podcast for more…

If you are Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services you are invited to download a guide to finding the right contractor bookkeeping service to fit your particular situation at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

Call Sharie now 206-361-3950 or [email protected] and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation.

Paperwork, Contractors, Can't Live With It And You Can't Be A Contractor Without It!

• It is one of your biggest headaches, heartaches, and backaches!

• It gets in the way and keeps you from getting things done!

• It reminds you of doing homework when you were in school!

• You did not open your construction company to be a desk jockey!

What If We Could Cut Your Paperwork Chores In Half And

Provide You With Useful Information Anytime You Want It?

We Remove Contractor's Unique Paperwork Frustrations

Listen to this Podcast for more…

If you are Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services you are invited to download a guide to finding the right contractor bookkeeping service to fit your particular situation at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

Call Sharie now 206-361-3950 or [email protected] and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation.

Has This Happened To You?

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 and inside your lunch box? So you bought QuickBooks thinking it would solve all your paperwork issues and your contractor bookkeeping issues? Instead, you found yourself inside a bigger mess than ever because QuickBooks is anything but Quick!

The advertisements made it seem so simple that even a child could setup QuickBooks and do all of the accounting for your Contracting Company in 10 minutes a day or less. 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.

There Is A Better Way. QuickBooks Is Not Designed To WORK For Contractors It Is Designed To SELL QuickBooks To Contractors.

I Love QuickBooks and have used it since it was released as QuickBooks 1.0 DOS® in 1991 because it was ten times better than custom built Construction Accounting Software that cost us over $60K.

There was 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 from startup to $10M.

An essential part of this Contractor Bookkeeping System was developing a QuickBooks Template that could be used by:

• General Contractors

• Custom House Builders

• Speculative House Builders

• Commercial Tenant Improvement Contractors

• Handyman Contractors

• Residential Remodel Contractors

• Trade Contractors

• Subcontractors

• Specialty Contractors

• Land Developers

• And Contractors Who Do It All!

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.

Listen to this Podcast for more…

If you are Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services you are invited to download a guide to finding the right contractor bookkeeping service to fit your particular situation at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

Call Sharie now 206-361-3950 or [email protected] and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation.

What You Should Expect From Your Bookkeeping System

First Important Principle In Construction Accounting: Everything starts with Cash because Cash Is Fact; Profit Is An Opinion. All transactions in the bank account of your construction accounting system no matter if it is QuickBooks or Xero must be assigned to the proper accounts:

• Income

• Job Deposits

• Payroll

• Taxes

• Cost of Goods Sold (Direct and Indirect Costs including Labor, Material, Other, and Subcontractors.

• Other expenses including permits, plans, bills from suppliers and purchases on your personal credit cards.

• Overhead

Second Important Principle In Construction Accounting is tracking Income accurately, Knowing how, when and where to put Customer Estimates, Customer Invoices, Customer Job Deposits and any Retainage Withheld, Vendor Refunds, and Rebates. Good Construction Accounting Is All About the Details. Payroll entered into QuickBooks (Employee, Check and Tax Detail depends on the Payroll Service used). Bank Reconciliations, Credit Card Reconciliations including Home Depot and Lowes, Vendor Statements verified and matched against invoices.

The Answers You Need To Operate And Grow Your Construction Company Are In Reports. To get accurate reports, the paperwork details must be entered into your QuickBooks by following The Construction Accounting Method NOT The Regular Accounting Method. The old saying “Garbage In = Garbage Out” is 100 times truer when it comes to Construction Accounting. When your bookkeeper takes shortcuts in the data entry, for example entering bulk numbers from credit statements for expenses in bulk instead of entering each transaction your Financial and Job Costing Reports are utterly worthless.

Fast Easy Accounting website can have so much detail that people get lost on it. So here is the short version of What We Do:

We Setup QuickBooks For All Kinds Of Contractors Handyman, Home Builders And Specialty Contractors

Listen to this Podcast for more…

If you are Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services you are invited to download a guide to finding the right contractor bookkeeping service to fit your particular situation at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

Call Sharie now 206-361-3950 or [email protected] and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation.

Focus Your Energy On Making Money And STOP HERDING PAPER!

FREE For Outsourced Contractor Bookkeeping Services Contractor Clients Of Fast Easy Accounting Contact Sharie Right Now 206-361-3950 [email protected]

After years of painstaking research and hundreds of hours testing dozens of ways for contractors stop wasting time trying to get organized and fighting the paperwork nightmare we have finally found the one document management software For Contractors that is simple, easy to use and the software developers understand what we need to support our contractor clients.

We Help Contractors Like You Find Ways To Make More Money, In Less Time So You Can Do The Things You Love Doing And Paperwork Is Not One Of Them! This document management software for our Outsourced Contractor Bookkeeping Clients will download bank and credit card feeds into a secure paperless server which they access anytime day or night. Imagine being able to know what you sent your Contractors Bookkeeping Service and being able to access the paperless filing cabinet anytime day or night from your phone, tablet, laptop or PC. It works with Windows and Mac.

Our Outsourced Contractor Bookkeeping Clients are getting it FREE because we believe it will make everyone's life easier and smoother where the bookkeeping is concerned.

After we set up your new paperless inbox for your contracting company, you will receive a welcome email from the software supplier, and we ask that you read it carefully and when you are ready, please contact their support desk, and they will help you setup your bank and credit card feeds. All new documents can be sent to paperless inbox because this new system is replacing our current paperless inbox.

The feeds do not give anyone any access to your accounts, just the information we need to put into QuickBooks, which is why we like this option. It downloads the existing transactions to the paperless server where we can access the data and put it into your Contracting Company QuickBooks Desktop version hosted on our Intuit Approved Commercial Hosting service. We believe this will help provide faster services and keep your QuickBooks more current.

We are always looking for ways to save construction contractors like you time and money. Unfortunately, most of the thousands of apps, software and hardware most are worthless. Less than 1% is worth a first look and 50% of those never make it to through to beta test where we will test it and of the ones we test 20% make it into our practice, and only 50% of those ever get recommended.

We Feel So Strongly About This App That We Are Paying For It And Providing It FREE To Our Outsourced Contractor Bookkeeping Services Clients

Listen to this Podcast for more…

If you are Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services you are invited to download a guide to finding the right contractor bookkeeping service to fit your particular situation at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

Call Sharie now 206-361-3950 or [email protected] and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation.

As an intelligent Contractor, you know how to operate your construction company and the biggest barrier to your success is getting your employees to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it, and do it the way you know works best.

Contractors who are Process Dependent Vs. People Dependent make more money and enjoy more freedom and peace of mind.

Success - Is a few simple disciplines practiced every day!

Failure - Is a few simple errors repeated every day!

If You Want Highly Qualified And Experienced Mentors To Guide You Step-By-Step In Setting Up A Working Business Process Management System For Your Construction Company Contact Sharie 206-361-3950 [email protected]

Do you own and operate a small construction company? Have you ever wondered if having a consultant with construction expertise to call on and ask questions would help you? Are you concerned you cannot afford one?

When Sharie and I, were running construction and plumbing service and repair businesses beginning in the early 1970's until 2000 we felt we did not need to pay anybody to tell us what to do because we knew exactly what to do. After several very painful and extremely costly mistakes, we found the adage "Experience Is The Best Teacher...And The Most Expensive" to be oh so true!

We found ourselves, our family, employees, and suppliers were all riding on our Roller Coaster of Surprises, some good, some bad. On occasion, we would wake up screaming bloody murder only to discover it was the middle of the afternoon, and we were not asleep!

After a while, we decided perhaps there was truth in the adage "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." I will admit I was a bit arrogant thinking since I was raised in a family of contractors that I knew a lot about construction. In fact, I knew quite a bit about what Michael Gerber calls "Working In The Business But Not On The Business."

Books, Tapes, Seminars and Guru's

For the next several years we added a combined total of over 4,000 books, tapes, workbooks, and several hundred handouts from every How-To-Do-It guru we could find. And we were still not getting anywhere fast because the seminars are like energy drinks, they pump you up and after a week or two in the real world, we were beaten down again. It was a roller coaster again.

Be, Do, Have

In time we found several consultants and professionals some good, some bad, some nightmares and one in particular kept repeating Be, Do, Have. Be the person, Do the work, Have the results.

In life we produce reasons or results and, reasons don’t count. Having experienced success and failure this message slowly sank into my head. We discovered that success came fast and easy when we engage the services of mentors that are skilled in construction because they were where we wanted to be.

We even hired a few consultants that were worthless because they had no construction experience and could only teach what they had learned in university or by hanging around excited seminar presenters selling Get-Rich-Quick-Schemes to rooms full of desperate people.

Listen to this Podcast for more…

If you are Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services you are invited to download a guide to finding the right contractor bookkeeping service to fit your particular situation at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

Call Sharie now 206-361-3950 or [email protected] and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation.

QuickBooks Year End Closing Tips For Your Contractors

Taking a bit of time to clean-up QuickBooks and prepare it before giving it to your tax preparer could save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars in income taxes.

QuickBooks Makes Some Closing Entries Automatically

Several years ago the accounting departments of smaller construction companies with less than $10M in annual sales had to slog through dozens of mind-numbing General Journal Entries to "Close The Books". With QuickBooks, that process is mostly automatic.

There are still a few things the accounting department needs to do. The easiest method is to open QuickBooks and go to the help menu and click on the "Year End Guide" as shown below:

A QuickBooks Year-End Guide similar to the one shown below will pop-up. It may vary depending on the version of QuickBooks you are using.

When you click on a task with your mouse the help screen for that function pops up and guides you through the process which typically takes several hours depending on the amount of bookkeeping data in your QuickBooks file and how complex your construction accounting system is setup.

Get Ready For The Tax Preparer Step-By-Step

1. Gather Receipts Into One Container

2. Review Personal Bank Statements - Business

3. Review Business Bank Statements – Personal

4. Reconcile Bank And Credit Card Accounts

5. Verify Petty Cash Entries

6. Invoice Unbilled Work

7. Money In (Accounts Receivable)

8. Inventory Count By December 31st

9. Fixed Assets Balance And Depreciation

10. Money Out (Accounts Payable)

11. Retirement Contributions - 401 (k), IRA, Etc.

12. Notes Payable, Loans, Mortgages, Credit Lines

13. Mileage Log / Each Vehicle / Business Use

14. W-9’s From Vendors & Contractors Over $600

15. Payroll Tax Deposits Match Quarterly Returns

16. Verify Profit And Loss - Does It Make Sense?

17. Back Up All Your QuickBooks Data Onsite And Offsite

When Your Computer Crashes Your QuickBooks Data Is Gone Forever! We strongly recommend you have a basic disaster recovery plan in place.

Step #1 backup QuickBooks onsite

Step #2 backup QuickBooks in the cloud

If your QuickBooks is resting on our QuickBooks Desktop In The Cloud Intuit Approved QuickBooks Hosting service that has multiple backup procedures in place, you do not need to back up again.

We offer QuickBooks year end closing services if you prefer not to do it yourself or rely on someone who only does it once a year and the prices are very reasonable.

Listen to this Podcast for more…

If you are Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services you are invited to download a guide to finding the right contractor bookkeeping service to fit your particular situation at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

Call Sharie now 206-361-3950 or [email protected] and schedule your no charge one-hour consultation.