dpilot83 - 4/27/2018 21:08

A good business needs to do a good job on the book keeping side. Doing a good job on the book keeping side takes a LOT of time.

I do not like bookwork. So for awhile we were always way behind. Bills got paid timely but Quickbooks got updated whenever it was needed for taxes or whatever reason. That kind of book keeping is just getting by and is not the way to do things.

I ended up hiring someone to help. I have found that it is a challenge to have someone help unless you provide them with GOOD information. It really comes down to making sure that the person who makes a transaction makes good notes on the transaction.

All of my employees, my parents, my wife and myself each have farm credit cards. Most transactions run through these cards.

We are also all sharing a DropBox folder labeled "receipts". I have made a very big deal about everyone doing the following steps for each transaction:

1. Get a receipt/invoice/whatever
2a. Write on the receipt what it was for. Not just, "brakes" but "brake pads for the rear axle on the black truck"
2b. If you're buying things for various pieces of equipment there may not be room to write notes beside every item on a receipt. In this situation I require that a legend is made. All of the items for the brake project on the black truck get a 1 beside them. The shop supplies bought for the shop get a 2. The oil for the tractor engine, oil filter and air filter get a 3. Then the legend below describes what corresponds to those numbers.
3. Scan the receipt into the receipts folder using the Dropbox app

Our book keeper takes all of the receipts out of Dropbox and enters them in Quickbooks. She moves the pdf's in a different folder structure (year/month) after entering it which gives us an organized backup of our paper copies and keeps the receipts folder manageable.

If you don't provide a hired book keeper with detailed information like that on a transaction, they can't do anything useful. Somehow you have to get information to them that means something to them. If you don't provide a large majority of that information to your bookkeeper you might as well just do the books yourself because they will have to be calling you all the time asking for info which will slow you down more than it would have if you had just done it yourself.

You may not like as much detail as I do. I have lots of classes set up in Quickbooks. I want to know how many dollars were spent on my 2011 F350 last year. I want to know how much gas it burned, how many dollars of parts it required and how many dollars of labor it required. Same for every other piece of equipment.

Some places don't accept credit cards or give a discount if you pay by check. Still take the receipts and you make a credit account in Quickbooks for that vendor. So the bill is entered based upon the receipt in DropBox before we ever receive a bill from the vendor. It may even be paid before we receive a bill. Then when the monthly statement comes out we compare what we think the statement should say to what all of our receipts added together minus our payments say the statement should say. This prevents double paying if they send a second notice the same day we send a check.

Bottom line in my experience is this:

He who initiates a transaction has a huge responsibility to make sure the transaction is documented. If you can't make that happen, you have no hope on all the rest of it happening unless you do the books yourself.