Watch one job for a week.
Here is a typical week at a roofing company, one common situation that can otherwise create a lot of back-office churn, and how smoothly it’s handled now.
Tuesday, 8:15
The crew on job 4180 comes up three roof vents short.
The QXO order is on the ground and it’s three slant-back vents shy of what the roof needs. Nobody waits on a redelivery. The production runner picks up three at the Menards ten minutes away, writes 4180 on the receipt, and scans it with his phone into the Google Drive folder before he pulls out of the lot. He lets QXO know the order came in short.
That is the entire event. It doesn’t matter what he names the file — only that it’s scanned and the job number is on it. It gets renamed on the way through.
Tuesday, end of day
By the end of the day, it’s been reviewed by a person and it’s on the job.
- ReadThe scan is read — vendor, date, every line, the total, and the job number he wrote on it.
- ReviewedIt lands on a review sheet, already matched to job 4180 and to materials. A person checks that it was read right and approves it. That person can be Michelle (she’s included), or if you’d rather, a team member.
- PostedA job-level expense is created in QuickBooks Online, then pushes to AccuLynx as a payment on the job.
- FiledRenamed and stored in your own Google Drive — where it can be pulled for analysis later — and uploaded to the job’s documents in AccuLynx.
It landed in your AccuLynx and your QuickBooks Online, and nobody entered any data. A few clicks on a spreadsheet — so a human still approves every cost before it posts.
Thursday
The QXO credit memo shows up in email two days later.
Your email — ideally Gmail — strips the attachment off the message and routes it into the same queue as the receipts. It’s read the same way the receipt was and reviewed the same way, and a vendor credit is created in QuickBooks Online and pushed to AccuLynx payments.
The job’s materials cost drops by exactly the three vents that never arrived.
Friday
Your bookkeeper closes out the week.
In this example, every Friday, Michelle or your bookkeeper does a weekly close of your books. Two things are different now.
Reviewing the bank feed from the card your runner used at Menards, QuickBooks has already suggested Tuesday’s expense as the match to that charge — instead of guessing what a Menards swipe might have been.
When it’s time to pay the monthly QXO statement, the vendor credit is sitting there to apply against the QXO bill, so the books add up to the penny against the check you’re about to write.
Later
You look at how the jobs are doing.
Looking at your jobs over time, you notice more big-box trips than normal — and they hurt your margin considerably. Job 4180 is the one on the right: nine purchases. Short deliveries, under-orders, the odd change on site.
You decide the ordering template needs a tweak, and you fix it for next time. Every one of those trips got counted, which is the only reason the pattern was there to see.
Questions
So you’ll be my bookkeeper? Is it cheaper if I use my own?
Ideally, yes, as it’s a part of my business model. Staying close to your books helps me ensure everything is running smoothly, and to figure out what to build next. It’s the main reason I am offering to do it — that, and it helps you cost-justify me from day one. So if you’re considering that route, know that for the foreseeable future, it will be me personally, and it’s included in the monthly fee. If ten partner companies turn out to be more than one person’s load, I may bring in another live person to help — but the accuracy of your books stays my responsibility either way, the fee won’t change, and I’ll make sure you know.
If you have someone on staff who does this, that’s fine — they can be the person approving the sheet, and I’ll get them trained. I just hope they’re doing something else for you, too, because this brings the bookkeeping function down to a fraction of even a half-time role. Let’s set up a demo and you’ll see exactly what I mean. As far as pricing goes, we can talk. But know I have a strong preference for partner companies that are looking for exactly what I’m selling.
Why AccuLynx and QuickBooks Online — and what if I’m not on them?
Because they’re what I know, and where I can add the most immediate value with what I’ve already built. Despite their challenges, I still believe they’re best-in-class for a company like yours — and my ideal partner companies believe that too.
So if you’re running something else, I’m not sure I can serve you well yet. Shoot me a note anyway; that may change.
What if it reads a receipt wrong?
Then a person catches it — that’s what the review sheet is for. Nothing posts to QuickBooks until someone has looked at what was read and approved it, so a smudged total or a job number that came out as 4130 gets fixed on the sheet that day, not found in March.
The review is a glance for the ones read right and a correction for the ones that weren’t — or more likely something new, like a new vendor. Regardless, a human has seen every cost before it lands on a job.
Book a thirty-minute call, and I can show you how it works in the first five.
Contact me