How would you do books in a small construction company?

Question

My husband and I are starting a company. He can do anything that involves construction or home remodeling. I have been trying to do the books and we have disagreed on everything. I started a job log sheet with employee hours and pay. Originally I started paying htem per job and now we are paying them per hour although this has become quite difficult as we are waiting on money to pay them and us too. I also started a bid log sheet so I could estimate profits from jobs and so we could keep track of what we told whom. This has created an argument as I believe you should measure everything regardless of who it is for. So what do you think? Is there an easier way?

Answer 1

You shouldn't be doing this manually, get some accounting software that will help.  There's Quicken's Quick Books, and there's Peachtree accounting software just to name a few.  

I don't see that paying your employees per job or hourly making a difference in you waiting on money, you owe them regardless of how you calculate it.  What are the terms of your contracts with your clients, do you take money as you go along, are you expecting a check the day the job is done or are you allowing them 30 days to pay.  If you're allowing them time to pay are they really paying.  This is another reason you should automate your proces.  

Absolutly you need to measure everything, that's the only way you know if you're making money.  When you have software it will be easy to track and to see if you're not charging enough for your work.

Answer 2

firstly - employees wages - irrespective of whether your business gets paid for jobs or not your employees are entitled to be paid - this is one of the downs of running a business (lack of funds)

secondly - I believe job sheets should be kept on all 'jobs' - how else are you to keep track of bids/costs/profit/loss etc.

And YES all costs should be itemized/measured - how else would you work out the costs if you don't know how much materials etc you used to complete a particular order/job.

As a bookkeeper I can only urge you to keep good records of everything pertaining to your business and have an extremely efficient filing system - it is up to you on how to do this - either a good software program / a database/spreadsheet or good handwritten records.  It all depends on how much money, time and effort you want to put into this to make it work for you.

However, whichever way you choose to go the two of you really need to get organized soon or it may affect the success or failure of your business.

Good luck !  

you can email me through my profile if you have any more questions and I will try to help if I can