Contractor Success Map With Randal Dehart | Contractor Bookkeeping And Accounting Services

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0113 And It Will Be About Do Contractors Need Every QuickBooks Feature? One of the most common complaints we hear from contractors is they feel like they are missing out if they are not using all that QuickBooks has to offer. Most contractors are hard driving Type "A" personalities who are concerned they are paying full price for QuickBooks and only using a fraction of what it can do and it drives them crazy. QuickBooks has over 100 built in reports and those reports can be filtered to display over 1,000,000 combinations. In addition to the staggering number of custom and special reports that can be developed in QuickBooks. The sheer volume of reports in QuickBooks makes it impossible to use all of them. The truth is no contractor uses 100% of the power of QuickBooks. For Example - The simple Profit & Loss Report Can Be Shown Four Different Ways With Little Effort Profit & Loss Report Can Be Shown As Accrual Basis or Cash Basis: Accrual Basis is generally for internal u

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0112 And It Will Be About Why Tax Accountants Are Hazardous Construction Bookkeepers Don't Let Tax Preparers Destroy Your Construction Company ProfitsTax Accountants - Can kill more cash flow and profit in your construction business in less than an hour by preparing your annual tax return using a messed up QuickBooks file than you can make up for with hard work in several months, if not years. This is because saving you money on your tax bill is not what they are paid to do; they are paid to fill out tax returns.This Is Not A Bad Thing - Rather it is a simple fact of business that people and companies do what they are paid to do. Tax Accountants also do not frame second story additions, cantilevered over an embankment in the dead of winter with a strong Northwesterly wind blowing in their face for the same reason; that is not what they are paid to do.The Answer Is - Have your Construction Accountant clean up QuickBooks before giving it to your tax accountant or tax preparer. Rea

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0111 And It Will Be About Contractor Bookkeeping Services Lies "We Live In A World Of What Is...Not What Should Be" - Randalism I am going to talk to you about a "Scammer" that could be draining cash and profits out of your construction company. It is the onslaught of "Cheap Bookkeeping Services" with an emphasis on Cheap! Contractor Bookkeeping Services Menu: | Good | Fast | Cheap | You Can Only Choose Two In the beginning, it appears to good to be true almost as if the contractor has found the impossible combination of Good+Fast+Cheap! After a short while, they re-discover the laws of business are still working and they are getting exactly what they paid for! They have engaged a bookkeeping service with data entry clerks trying to be bookkeepers! People who bless their hearts are not even close to being regular bookkeepers, let alone construction bookkeepers, which is completely different from regular bookkeeping as a shovel is from a backhoe! Learn More... The idea that anyon

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0110 And It Will Be About Passing Your Construction Company To Next Generation There will come a time when you will pass your construction company on to the next generation, sell it or simply close it down. If this is something, you are considering in the near future or perhaps several years down the road it is never too early to begin planning for it. Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance Planning hurts! Because it involves "thinking" which is, some of the hardest work you will ever do and it is the most profitable in the long run. Just knowing the answers or at least having a strategy for finding answers can mean the difference between comfortable lifestyle and the all too common "Work-Till-You-Die" treadmill that far too many contractors are on. Start by asking yourself two simple questions: #1 If your construction company were for sale, would you buy it? #2 How much would you be willing to pay for it?  Common Contractor Paradigms Of Mom And Dad Contractors They are Dog An

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0109 And It Will Be About The Truth Of Owning A Construction Company  Contractors Are Our Heroes! The rough and tumble world of construction company ownership is not for the weak or the timid. It is an arena where the price of admission is a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and long nights and lost sleep, with peaks of enthusiasm and depths of despair. It can feel like riding a roller coaster operated by a mad man trying to convince you to get off, get out and go do something more relaxing like teaching a pig to sing! If you work it right you can end up with a construction company that is like a money tree that can take care of you and your family for a lifetime and leave a legacy for your heirs. To get to the truth about your construction company you must go on a journey. It is four levels deep and like most successes in life it is simple but not easy.  The Four Levels Number One - What contractors want to hear Number Two - What contractors want to believe Number Three - Everything

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0108 And It Will Be About Working With Consultants To Help Your Contracting Company Many business consultants contact us after they start working with Handymen, Contractors and Construction Company because they are frustrated with contractors who are having trouble earning a profit. The primary root cause is most contractors do not understand their overhead costs and breakeven. In turn, contractors are frustrated with Bean Counters and Desk Jockeys who do not understand how construction works. Perhaps this article will shed some light that will help consultants and contractors understand each other and offer some tips that will benefit everyone. Business consultants live in a world where successful companies have a Business Strategy of M.A.P. or Marketing First, Accounting Second, Production Third and that is completely opposite of what most contractors do. Contractors, bless their hearts, we love them all! Most contractors operate their companies as if they were job superintend

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0107 And It Will Be About Contractors Who Babysit Their Bookkeeping Department Did You Hire A Bookkeeper For Your Construction Company And Now You Feel Like You Are Running An Adult Day Care Center? Is efficient bookkeeping difficult to achieve? Is your construction company under utilizing software? Do you have lack of confidence in your QuickBooks financial and Job Costing Reports?  Are you babysitting a bookkeeping dept that is supposed to be saving you time and money, not causing you to multitask instead of focusing on things that make you money? Are you a $100 an hour producer being slowed down by a $15 hour bookkeeper who has to be told what to do over, and over and over? When construction is booming it is hard to find a good bookkeeper who knows what to do and will do it and next to impossible to find someone is skilled in construction accounting because it is 10X harder than regular bookkeeping. Anyone can be a bookkeeper if QuickBooks setup is done correctly for construc

This Podcast Is Episode Number This Podcast Is Episode Number 0106 And It Will Be About The Cheap Contractor Spends The Most Money  In an attempt to save money, the cheap contractor does the following and ends up spending the most money and earning a tiny profit because they believe in Maximizing over Optimizing. In the short run Maximizing can payoff; however, in the long run it never does.  This article is a bit strong and it could offend some folks. If it offends you, please accept my sincere apologies. I tend to tell it straight and not sugar coat anything because I have been involved in the construction industry most of life beginning with working in my Step Father's construction company after school in the mid 1960's. During my lifetime, I have seen too many contractors work hard, never have enough money to retire. Some of them die from exhaustion and others just wore themselves out and lived their final years in poverty and only a few, less than 5% ever made enough money from owning and operating their

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0105 And It Will Be About How QuickBooks Journal Entries Distort Construction Job Cost Reports Lately We Are Seeing An Increase In QuickBooks Journal Entries Journal Entries - Are a quick and dirty way to get transactions in without putting forth time and effort to enter each transaction. In the short run you save time; in the long run you can forget about accurate Job Cost Reports. Credit Card Statements - Are the most common example we see followed by vendor statements from lumberyards, Home Depot, Lowes, concrete suppliers, plumbing and electrical suppliers and others. The Bookkeeper - Shuffles through a pile of paperwork or electronic documents and finds a credit card statement and notices that it has a lot of transactions. Depending on how well the bookkeeper has trained the contractor is what determines whether the transactions are properly entered and the costs assigned to a job using the item codes or if there is one giant Journal Entry. Using Journal Entries - Means the

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0104 And It Will Be About QuickBooks Is Not A Professional Construction Accounting Software  But It Can Be Made Into One For Contractors With Annual Sales Volume Between $0 Start Up And $10,000,000 Did you buy QuickBooks thinking it was “Quick” at keeping the “Books” for your Contracting Company and got very frustrated with it because it was neither? You are not alone! The question a lot of contractors ask is "Does anybody out there understand how to do the bookkeeping for my Construction Company?" It is not your fault QuickBooks fault, your spouse’s fault or your bookkeeper’s fault or anyone else’s fault. QuickBooks was built upon the foundation of very simplistic single-entry bookkeeping software called “Quicken” built on DOS. Quicken was developed for regular people, not businesses, to have an electronic check register for keeping track of bank balances without having to use those tiny manual paper registries that come with every box of blank checks? When Quicken was released

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0103 And It Will Be About Contractor Cost Library A Cost Library Is Another Secret Successful Contractors Use To Generate Enormous Positive Cash Flow And Profit Money doesn't grow on trees; it grows inside your properly setup QuickBooks file that is maintained by people who understand construction accounting. All you have to do is follow the Contractors Success M.A.P. and in due time you can become wealthy. This article is going to cover one of the secrets we share with consulting clients known as The Cost Library.  A cost library is used to develop construction estimates and there are three basic types of cost libraries contractors use: Heuristics - And experience is the most common method since they are essentially shortcuts that reduce the mental energy or cognitive load of making a decision. Contractors also call them Rule of Thumb, SWAG - (Silly Wild All-Encompassing Guess), Past Experience, Intuitive Judgment or common sense. Excel Spreadsheets - Most common among contrac

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0102 And It Will Be About The Top Ten Myths Of  Construction Bookkeeping Over The Past Few Decades We Have Heard And Read Some Really Good Construction Bookkeeping Myths And Legends And Here Are A Few #10 "I thought the QuickBooks website said that QuickBooks was easy to setup and use" #09 "Since it has Quick in the name then of course QuickBooks is easy, why else would they do that?" #08 "I know how to write checks and balance my bank statement so how hard can it be to use QuickBooks" #07 "I attended a full day QuickBooks class and got this pretty paper certificate that says I know QuickBooks"  #06 "I've been doing bookkeeping for over twenty years and you can't teach me nothing I don't already know" #05 "I have worked at a bank for over ten years and seen hundreds of financial statements so I can use QuickBooks" #04 "I am a C.P.A. and I know everthing about accounting, so doing the bookkeeping for a contractor child's play" #03 "I have lots of experience because the last four

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0100 And It Will Be About The Recession Is Going Away The Worst Is Over Which Means Now Is The Time To Get Ready To Prosper!No I Am Not Crazy - The Business Cycle is getting ready to turn. Like the ocean waves it is constantly moving and rolling up and down over and over. When you have a Business Strategy and you know the answers the questions will not bother you! Just like when you took a test in school in your favorite subject; it was fast and easy! I Am Privileged - To have been Involved with The Greatest Industry On Earth, Construction since 1965 when I was a child in grade school working in my step father's landscaping and construction business. Those Were Good Times - He had true grit and a heart as big as a mountain. He was severely handicapped and yet he manned up every morning and got the job done, every day for over 50 years, as an owner / operator of his construction business. If you are interested you can read more about him by clicking here.In The 1960's - Riding in

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0100 And It Will Be About Warning Signs You Have A Bad Bookkeeper In Your Contracting Company The Number One Warning Sign You Have A Bad Bookkeeper Is They Panic When You Say You Are Going To Ask Us Review QuickBooks It is amazing how many times over the years we have been called in by contractors to clean up a horrific QuickBooks disaster caused by the same bad bookkeepers. There is a never ending supply of bad bookkeepers, cheap bookkeepers and incompetent bookkeepers that move around the USA including Alaska and Hawaii to infect and attempt to destroy construction companies, home builders, commercial tenant improvement contractors, handyman contractors, remodel contractors, trade contractors, subcontractors, general contractors and more. Every time it happens it feels like we are all living through a bad movie script and everybody knows their lines and the bookkeeper knows the scam is over and it is time to leave. A word to the wise "If you think it may be time to fire your

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0099 And It Will Be About Contractor Strengths Weakness Opportunities And Threats SWOT Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities And Threats Analysis (S.W.O.T.) - Are among the tools we use to help construction companies like yours to evaluate your geographic and demographic target markets and develop strategic plans to increase you company sales, cash flow and bottom line profits by focusing on a few Key Strategies that require the least amount of effort and generate optimum return. Strengths - Are construction projects that your construction company does extremely well at and earns a greater than average gross margin than give it an advantage over other contractors. What are they and how can your construction contracting company expand on them? Weaknesses - Are construction projects that your construction company does poorly at and breaks even or loses money. What are they and how can your construction contracting company turn them into strengths? Opportunities - Are construction pro

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0098 And It Will Be About Strategic Contractor Bookkeeping Services Is Your Wife, Girlfriend, Partner or Bad Bookkeeper Responsible For Your Contractors Bookkeeping? Are You At The Mercy - Of your bookkeeper? Does your bookkeeper have any bad habits that annoy you?  Did You Know - That you may be able to have your construction bookkeeping done professionally for less than you are spending now! People Ask How - Can we save them $100's or even $1,000's dollar a year when they can do their own construction bookkeeping or hire a Cheap Bookkeeper? Read our article Cheap Bookkeepers The System Is The Solution - In 1991 we developed a Comprehensive Construction Strategic Bookkeeping System to add useful content to QuickBooks setup in order to make it work for construction companies. Since then we have made thousands of improvements and we continually improve, update, innovate and enhance it.  Having Worked With Contractors - And seen 100's of QuickBooks setup files, met with lots of ba

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0097 And It Will Be About Having A Business Plan For Your Construction Company Your Business Plan is one of your key Competitive Advantages that can massively increase your sales, profitability and cash flow. The reason is simple, 99% of your competition do not have one and many of the ones that do rarely look at it. In most cases when a contractor has a Business Plan it was because they needed loan, investment capital or some other external force was applied. Once the crisis or need passed they simply let it rest-in-peace on the shelf. Why Spend Time And Effort - To develop your business plan? Because contractors use business plans all the time and they most of them do not realize it until we show them: Business Plans For Construction Follow This General Format #1 Executive Summary - Reputation In construction, your reputation is vital due to the continual onslaught of competition, which is why highly profitable contractors establish and protect their reputations very carefully

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0095 And It Will About Bookkeeper Vs Accountant Vs CPA For Your Construction Company Tax Season Is Here and this is when most construction contractors think about getting their construction bookkeeping system in order so they can file their annual tax return for the previous year. Each Branch Of Accounting serves a different function similar to how it works in construction. There are framers, rough carpenters and finish carpenters and all three works with lumber yet in most cases the skillsets to do everything are rarely found in the same person. Three Carpentry Skillsets = Three Types Of People Someone Skilled In Framing, Rough And Finish Carpentry normally costs more and produce less per man-hour than a team of people with each individual skillsets. The issue is the super-skilled person tends to work at the pace which requires the most intense thought and skill and yet they expect to be paid the same rate for all three tasks which makes sense because they are super-skilled. Th

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0095 And It Will About Bad Bookkeeping Causes Contractors To Distrust Good Bookkeepers This podcast is being recorded in January 2015 and as of now; it is good to see construction moving again. It is based upon an article Sharie wrote and I, Randal will be reading it as she wrote it. Sharie as many of you know is the co-founder of Business Consulting and Accounting and its subsidiary Fast Easy Accounting and we specialize in Contractors Bookkeeping Services, mentoring and back office support for construction contractors and related companies all across the USA including Alaska and Hawaii. Sharie is a very nice, person who is easy to talk to and actually listens to you. We met in High School and married shortly after graduation in 1973. She has extensive experience as a tax accountant, co-owner of several of our construction companies including a mid-sized Plumbing firm with over 20 employees. We opened our contractor bookkeeping firm in 1991 and kept it small until we sold our

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0094 And It Will About QuickBooks Year End Closing Tips For Your Construction Company 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 in order 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". A QuickBooks Year-End Guide will pop-up and just be aware that 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 task pops up and guides you through the process which normally 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 Th