471: Overcoming Your Most Common Construction Business Time Waster

Every day you make financial decisions about your company, which affect how successful and sustainable your construction business is. If you're responsible for the bookkeeping and all the paper management (bills, receipts, estimates, invoices), you could be making errors that affect your decisions. Because of an incorrect decimal place, you may think that you have more money in the bank than you do. Or you may not fully understand how a decision today affects your business tomorrow.   Keeping up with paperwork is a typical construction business timewaster we noticed in more than thirty years in the industry. Doing your books often winds up costing you more money in the end, not to mention the time and energy that goes into a task you despise or, at the very least, don't fully understand.    This is one area that many construction company owners hate to be part of but still choose to take responsibility for.   Here are some ways having a construction bookkeeper can solve your paperwork frustrations and free more of your time:   1. Financial Health   A bookkeeper keeps track of your company's financial health and can advise you on decisions that can help you grow your business. They can also warn you about pitfalls that could hurt your long-term growth.    Consider that you have a great month with a lot of money coming in, so there's extra cash in the bank account. You might be tempted to upgrade your equipment, but a bookkeeper can warn you that there are upcoming payments the money is earmarked for. They can help you determine the best time to purchase those tools, so you won't suddenly find yourself with a zero balance.   This information becomes even more critical if you're looking to undertake significant financial transactions, such as taking out a loan or purchasing a new truck. A bookkeeper can help you fully understand the financial ramifications of such a move.    2. Late Transactions    You might think a late bill payment doesn't affect your business, but the fees associated with late payments add up, and missing the wrong payment can affect your company's credit. That may make it more challenging to get a business loan or credit card.    Worse, you could miss important transactions in one month that have ramifications for your business the next month or later on. By absent-mindedly skipping a payment in May, you may think you have extra money that gets spent—until you notice you have to double up on payment in June.    Construction Bookkeepers stay on top of your financial transactions and understand how every transaction affects your business. They can help determine the optimal time to pay debts and let you know if clients are behind on payments.    The information and insight a bookkeeper provides can go a long way to helping you make intelligent business decisions. Not having a bookkeeper adds unnecessary work to your load; it increases your stress and increases the chances of errors.    3. Tax Compliance   On top of all that, bookkeepers also stay aware of changing laws to ensure your company is compliant with payroll and tax laws and any other financial rules and regulations that affect your business.      With all the negatives to doing the bookkeeping yourself, why wouldn't you hire a bookkeeper so you can focus on growing your business?    Final thoughts   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.   Remember, if you are sick and tired of doing administrative tasks such as handling your documents, we are here to remove your paperwork frustrations. Although a 100% paperless office is not the complete answer, we can certainly help you reduce most of it. In most cases, we can help contractors like you eliminate over 50% of your paperwork; the related savings and increased production more than pays for our services.  

About The Author:

Sharie DeHart, QPA is the co-founder of Business Consulting And Accounting in Lynnwood, Washington. She is the leading expert in managing outsourced construction bookkeeping and accounting services companies and cash management accounting for small construction companies across the USA. She encourages Contractors and Construction Company Owners to stay current on their tax obligations and offers insights on how to manage the remaining cash flow to operate and grow their construction company sales and profits so they can put more money in the bank. Call 1-800-361-1770 or sharie@fasteasyaccounting.com