Monday, March 31, 2014

Bookkeeping Presentation at SFPUC Contractor Assistance Center


On 3/20/14, thanks to the sponsorship of Merriwether and Williams Insurance Service, Wayne Lee and I have the opportunity do do a presentation at SFPUC, Contractor Assistance Center on Bookkeeping and Quickbooks. Ben Poole and Price Hallowell of the center have been most helpful in providing technical assistance with the equipment set up. Jennifer Elmore of Merriwether was most kind in chauffeuring us around and provided sandwiches to nourish the mind and bodies of the attendees.

It was a great venue; great conference room with lots of space, light, nice furniture and huge mixing area. We have about 15 attendees. We thought of it a success. The attendees were enthusiastic about the subject matters. We tried hard to share some fundamental principles about money, cash flow vs profit, and financial reports. We hope that these principles will come in handy in the future.

At the first half, we discussed all money related issues; such as why care about financial matters? For it is one of the 3 major areas besides operations and marketing that all business owners need to cover. Why cash flow is different than profit; for you likely have to front all job costs -- labor, material, equipment for 2 months before you get paid. Hence each new job or expansion demands more credits, and you must establish as much credits as you could before you need them. We talked about the 2 ways of financing; i.e. debt vs equity. And how to get a good FICO score; i.e. by demonstrating your willingness to pay and your ability to pay. We covered the 3 major financial reports; Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss and Cash Flow Statement. We dissect components that made up those reports. We tried to explain them in the simplest language.

In the second half, we covered tips and tricks on Quickbooks. Among the attendees, only 1 uses American Contractor which costs $10,000 and 5 uses Quickbooks which costs $250. No wonder majority stays with Quickbooks for the price difference is so big.

Since Quickbooks is form-driven, if you use A/Receivable invoice and A/Payable bill features, Quickbooks will give you many more reports; especially job related ones. We covered items set up. various jobs reports such as Job Profitability Summary, and detailed report on each job, such as Job Profitability Report. Since labor and burden make up a big part of job costs, we emphasized that to effectively allocate labor and burden to jobs, payroll must be integrated within Quickbooks; i.e. by using Intuit Payroll Services. With all payroll burden set up on payroll items list, the allocation will be auto pilot thereafter.

We explained how we work with our clients; mostly on-site as their in-house accountants on a once-a-week or twice-a-month basis. We also support their in-house staff if they already have their accounting personnel.

No comments:

Post a Comment