Do you want to know what is the best bookkeeping software for small landscaping business? Or the best accounting software for small landscaping business? Have you started thinking about how best to take care of your finances, but you’re not sure which of the so-called “bookkeeping software” out there will fit your needs?
Are you a landscaper and wondering what is the best bookkeeping software for landscaping business? We know that managing a small landscaping business can be hard. There are taxes to pay, invoices to issue and, most importantly, bills to pay. These are similar problems that many other entrepreneurs better faced.
Estimates/quotations, invoicing, payments, expenses each and everything that corresponds to accounting of lawn care business.
Empower your staff with the best tool to provide information anytime, anywhere. Let your employees create invoices on the go, log time and expenses. Each and every expense incurred for a project can be logged at one place. Expenses such as cost of fertilizes, lawn mowers, soil replacement etc., can be logged instantly when the expense is incurred.
QuickBooks
QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. Their products are geared mainly toward small and medium-sized businesses and offer on-premises accounting applications as well as cloud-based versions that accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and payroll functions.
Features:
- Track income & expenses.
- Send custom invoices & quotes.
- Snap & store receipts.
- Connect with your bank.
- Manage pay-roll.
Pricing:
- The Self-Employed plan starts at US$15 per month.
It is Not an All-In-One Solution
As your business has grown, you’ve likely found that QuickBooks for landscape contractors is not an all-in-one solution. You’re now finding that you require other systems in order to meet all of your needs. On top of using QuickBooks, you might also be using an estimating system to price your jobs and maybe a scheduling system to set up your operations team.
While each of these systems meets your needs individually, none of them “speak” to one another and that’s leading to duplicate data entry. It’s also leaving you more open to making mistakes since you’re entering data in more than one location.
Plus, as you grow, you find that you want even more tools. You’d like CRM capabilities, an inventory tracking tool, and the ability to seamlessly move from one functionality to another (ie: taking an estimate right into the proposal phase and from there moving it on to production).
Job Costing is Cumbersome
Another big downside to using QuickBooks for your landscaping company is that job costing can be a very complicated process. If you’re working with another scheduling program or estimating system on top of QuickBooks, then you are going to have to re-enter the same sold work into QuickBooks as well as into the secondary program. After that, when the work is completed, the time will need to be entered correctly into QuickBooks for payroll and invoicing. After invoices are paid and payroll is completed, you’ll need to enter that information into a spreadsheet to compare the data from sold work in order to get an accurate job cost.
It’s a lot of steps and a lot of moving data around. You can see how the process can easily get bogged down. It’s very complicated to run numbers that way and frankly, it’s a lot of work, too. It shouldn’t be this hard.
You’re Not Receiving Real-Time Data
Using QuickBooks for your landscaping company will calculate some data for you, but it’s all after the fact. For instance, it would be difficult for you to determine if you were over the budgeted hours for a job in enough time to make an actual change. Instead, you’re typically reviewing the data after the job is completed and trying to make changes to the next job. In that way, it’s more of a historical analysis of your jobs than a real-time solution.
Xero
Xero is accounting software made for your business. From invoicing on the run to helping keep you Single Touch Payroll (STP) compliant, Xero’s accounting software has all the features you need to manage your numbers effortlessly. Voted #2 in accounting software for small business.
Features:
- Send invoices and quotes.
- Reconcile bank transactions.
- Capture bills and receipts.
- Full-service payroll.
Pricing:
- Free 3-day trial.
- Pricing starts from US$9 per month.
Waterford Business Solutions
Waterford Business Solutions is fully equipped to address all of your bookkeeping needs and is available to provide both virtual and in-house bookkeeping services.
As a landscaping company, you know how to make lawns, hardscapes, and gardens flourish and look beautiful. However, do your books give you the same satisfaction as a freshly manicured lawn or hedge? We know it’s not always easy to make your customers happy while maintaining the financial end of the business.
With landscaping, your material costs tend to be significantly lower than other home service professionals unless you provide plants or hardscapes to your customers. As such, one of the central breakdowns we pay closer attention to is your payroll and employee costs. We are able to separate those costs into office work, supervising work, and laborers. This helps keep a pulse on your payroll and how it is distributed throughout the company to ensure ratios stay consistent and don’t get out of hand too quickly.
The other side to tracking your payroll costs this way helps track trends that are currently in the industry and can help you project the type of services customers are requesting more or predict seasonal trends. Knowing this can help you prepare your business for a tighter cash flow. An example of this can be you thinking of getting new equipment, but knowing that off-season is coming can convince you to hold off on that purchase until you increase cash flow.
We know that it can be hard to keep up with your clients, jobs, and bookkeeping. That’s why we offer many different services to assist you with your books, whether it be teaching you how to do them or doing them for you. We enjoy working with our landscapers to maintain and grow their businesses through financial understanding. For example, if you have different divisions, yard maintenance vs. landscaping, we are able to break our sales and costs into one report by the division. Give us a call today to discuss a custom package tailored to your company, and let us help you make up for the slow winter months!
Wave Accounting
Wave is a company that provides financial services and software for small businesses. They provide a free invoicing & accounting software with credit card processing & payroll services, which is primarily designed for businesses with 1-9 employees.
Conclusion:
A landscaping business cannot run without bookkeeping. It is a challenging thing to do it by yourself. Even the simplest landscaping business needs help from skilled bookkeepers to accomplish day-to-day operations. One of the most logical ways for a landscaping company to handle its money is with a small or general-purpose bookkeeping software. There are tons of them out there that can easily become overwhelming for those who don’t know much about them.