Yes, I know, as a Web Content Developer and Fast Easy Accounting’s resident Webmaster, this blog post could come quite a surprise to you but bear with me on this. I realized that writing about Online Marketing Trends and the power of Inbound Marketing doesn’t obviously support a more traditional way of marketing, but I am taking this topic head on to bring you a different point of view. In this day and age, despite the steady growth of the web, still, about 10% of U.S. adults do not use the internet - that means not all your target clients are online. This is an opportunity for you to implement some offline marketing methods to add to your overall promotional strategy.

If you’re just establishing your contracting business, have no office support or crew to assist you, and looking for ways to promote your company without spending a lot of money in advertising costs, then this could be the answer you’re looking for. If you’re a seasoned contractor and just want to do more networking in your spare time, this can also work for your company. Notice I mentioned “free” – however, this is going to cost you a bit (or more) of your time and effort (perhaps gas). Consider having a marketing budget if you want to take it up a notch and optimize your plan. For now, take out those box of business cards and shove it in your glove box and let’s get rolling:

Accounting has two sides:

Internal Accounting (Management Accounting) - for making money. Its purpose is to help you operate and grow your business profitability.

External Accounting (Tax Accounting) - for paying taxes. Its purpose is to prepare tax forms, report your income, and make sure you pay your fair share of taxes.

Understanding the difference will impact your company's financial health and wealth. Both groups of accountants must know the relationship between your internal bookkeeping and the Internal Revenue Service, and the importance of paying the right amount of taxes. There are a lot of professional bookkeepers, accountants, and tax preparers and they all serve a different role in your business.

One of the biggest struggles contracting business owners deal with is the overwhelming amount of paper they have to organize as part of their everyday tasks. Invoices, receipts, bills, contracts, client records, pay applications, insurances, licenses - are just a few that seem to be never-ending "etc". Keeping important documents is necessary. Most contractors go from one extreme to the other. One extreme saves everything for decades, and the other tosses everything out.

What to save? What to toss out? At Fast Easy Accounting, we no longer need to print and save every document in file folders and keep adding new file cabinets. Our paperwork processes ensure your happiness and peace of mind knowing that your papers can be retrieved electronically at any time in the future.

There is a thread of success weaved into the fabric of the most successful, wealthiest, consistently most profitable house builders, general contractors, residential remodel contractors, flipper house contractors, commercial tenant improvement contractors, sub-contractors, specialty contractors, handyman, architects and designers and over 100 other types of contractors and construction-related companies - they adapt to a continually changing environment.

Everything in the Universe is in balance, and parts of it are easy to see and understand and some parts are hidden in plain sight and require some effort to see and understand. Your ability to look beyond the initial statement and understand the hidden meaning why successful contractors adapt to change to survive and thrive will serve you well. The truth is the most successful, wealthy, highly profitable construction contractors don't like change.

Job Costing, in its simplest terms, links the money you spent on a job against the money you received to do a particular job. It is the process of tracking all the costs related to a project to determine its profitability.

A common misconception is that Job Costing is only for large contractors with a dozen employees. Since keeping track of all costs and expenses involves a lot of additional work for contractors and field workers, and most construction company owners do not see an immediate benefit, some contracting businesses still haven’t implemented Job Costing procedures despite the financial risks.

Our winning strategy talks about Marketing as the foundation, Accounting as the center of your construction business, and Production where the rubber meets the road, or if you please, this is where all the planning and support structure pays off.

Some contractors and construction company owners believe in maximizing production by driving everyone from the laborers to the Project Managers to work harder, longer, faster, hustle and run. And if they are giving less than 110% to the company they are not doing enough. You may have different opinions on this but one thing I've learned from experience is that construction meeting process increases productivity.

Right now, if you are like most construction company owners, your construction accounting records are in an unlocked file cabinet, or worse, sitting on someone's desk. As an accounting firm, our client's privacy and security remain our top priorities and are continually looking at ways to develop and evaluate our system to prevent breach and network holes. We utilize 128-bit Secure Socket Layer encryption which ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. There are two levels of restrictions and passwords must be entered before you can get your data file.

Contractors often ask us if they can buy our Chart Of Accounts with Cost of Goods Sold and import them into their QuickBooks Desktop file or their QuickBooks Online file. The answer is yes!

Click here for QuickBooks Desktop Chart of Accounts with Cost of Goods Sold

Click here for QuickBooks Online Chart of Accounts with Cost of Goods Sold

Direct Costs are tied to the jobs (field labor, material, and other cost items) Office material (pencils, paper, toner, etc. are overhead) Yes, an accountant could say these many pencils are used in the field, and that notepad is used in the truck. 

The answer is the dividing line of what the DIRECT COSTS to the job and those are Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

I would like to start my blog post by asking you to reflect on your WHY. Pause for a while and think about the reason or reasons why you started your business. I highly doubt that your answer is rooted in accounting tasks or involved any type of bookkeeping project at the slightest. It is apparent that you’re passionate about what you do and you love working in the construction industry, be your own boss, and have the freedom you’ve dreamed of.

I admit, small business owners - like myself, have learned to make the most of the resources we have. And as an entrepreneur, tend to take on the challenge of wearing multiple hats. Marketing your business, answering phone calls, responding to emails, scheduling appointments – to name a few. However, I am reminding you now that being a company owner and doing your accounting and bookkeeping requires a totally different skill set from being a construction expert in your field. When it comes to your financials, it would be wise to take a step back and let someone who specializes in bookkeeping do it for you. Not just any accountant or bookkeeper, but see to it that they are Construction Bookkeeping and Accounting Professionals.

At some point, we probably had similar situations having employees we wonder why we hired them.

No one feels worse about a bad fit than the contractor when an employee needs to be let go gently or immediately fired. Other times anger is the first emotion when fraud, side jobs or other forms of theft has occurred.

For the contractor business owner, the work must go on. Schedules need to be kept, and the additional workload falls on someone. That someone could be you, your spouse and/or both of you (who are already overloaded with tasks). Frustration comes from trying to discover quickly and easily what was left undone, what is the most critical, when can it get done, how to get it done and who is the best person to do it (yesterday).