Streamline Your Payment Process with Our General Contractor Construction Invoice Sample for Enterprises

General contractor construction invoice sample for enterprises

love it or hate it you cannot run a legitimate  construction business without it what am i   talking about bookkeeping for your contracting  business i'll be sharing with you four different   things you need to know in order to run a  successful construction business [Music]   so the first thing that we need to know about   bookkeeping for a construction business is  what are the benefits what are the pitfalls   so essentially if you are not running proper  bookkeeping uh things are a mess and you're not   structuring your different incomes and expenses  in the right way you're essentially sailing blind   uh you're the captain of the ship you're the head  of your business but you have no idea you know   what's coming up next you're in the dark you're  sailing blind you know an iceberg a large amount   of debt some cash flow issues things can jump out  and wreck you and wreck your business so that's   the first thing we want to avoid by doing proper  bookkeeping a second thing that you need to know   about the benefits and pitfalls is decision making  you cannot make proper decisions from a business   perspective if you don't know where your finances  are at you know just having money in the bank   doesn't mean it's the right time to go purchase  some some equipment or hire a bunch of new guys   or try to scale your business so without knowing  your specific numbers um with your bookkeeping   you'll not be able to make proper decisions uh  for the future of your business and then the next   thing would be just simply having enough money  right and knowing where your money is going uh   making sure that again you're not taking on some  some debt or getting ahead of yourself and and   forgot you know i got to pay taxes at the end of  the year and i've got no money saved up for it so   just simply looking at your bookkeeping  and having it in order is going to   give you some confidence to run your business  properly so the second thing that you need to know   about bookkeeping for your construction business  is automation right myself included i don't want   to do bookkeeping i can i have a business owner  should be preoccupied with generally you're going   to be hiring a bookkeeper hiring some financial  team to take care of this whether it's in-house   or just contracting a company to do it and you're  going to want to connect all your accounts with   your bookkeeping software so we're talking about  automation i'd say every software that you're   gonna have for bookkeeping is gonna be able to  link to your bank accounts to your credit cards   uh to whatever financial institutions that  you're you're banking with and running your   organization with so that all that data is is  pulled into the accounting software and then   it just needs to be categorized uh payroll  and time tracking again should be automated   uh just running your payroll you know you're  gonna have someone that's gonna be doing it so   they're gonna have a system with your software  but it should be automated in that you have   delegated this to your bookkeeper or somebody  that that takes care of the admin uh your business   and time tracking of your employees that should  all link directly into your accounting software   you should not be having to you know tabulate a  bunch of hours for employees or sending pictures   or texts or whatever you should have some sort of  software some sort of system in place so it's all   automated jobs are tagged you know where this  fight you know the different expense of your   business or towards certain projects whether  it's overhead that should all be automated   and then uh cost codes and estimating again your  estimates should be automated to link in with your   accounting software or at least have some sort of  a system with your admin team so that you can just   pull stuff across from you know meeting a client  creating an estimate goes into the bookkeeping   expenses are tracked ing to your budgets  and everything is systematized and you know smooth   process and running efficiently if you've got  breaks in this system it's going to be taking up   a ton of your time you're going to be wasting your  time on admin and trying to figure out you know   change orders or who paid what where how much if  you lost money on a job maybe you don't even know   where your money's going or where clients money  is going um so if clients get a sense that you   don't really have a bookkeeping system or a way  of tracking you know expenses and all this it's   going to give them a bad feeling and they'll  be a little uneasy to do business with you   if you don't know yourself where costs are going  on their project so that's automation uh the third   point third thing that you need to know is your  key financials so should be reviewing this very   often i'd say at least weekly if not bi-weekly uh  some very key financials would be your profit and   loss right you need to know am i making money you  know how much money is it up or down uh compared   to last year at this time uh where are things at  the balance sheet you know what what's the value   of your business what's you know your accounts  receivable accounts payable where's your debts   at your assets all the different parts of your  business you're going to find that on your balance   sheet cash flow very important i've been there  i know other people have too of where you have   payroll coming up on friday and you're looking  at your bank account and it's not looking good   and you're like uh how did i get here right  you know how did this happen well some proper   you know proactiveness you could have foreseen  that you're gonna have a crunch and maybe you   know collect it on some some accounts payable  or accounts receivable collect on some some   of those or um not purchased you know a bunch of  materials that you needed in order to pay payroll   so keeping track of all that i can remember for  myself when i i used to do my bookkeeping myself   for many years as a subcontractor small operation  you know i had a couple of guys as we expanded and   grew and i got busier i just i simply didn't have  time it got neglected uh for i don't know months   at a time i would check in on a bit but i wasn't  really paying attention to doing it properly   finally i hired someone to clean up my books and  it was an eye-opener a big surprise and honestly   i kind of didn't want uh to know more or less  because i just been you know pushing sales and   productivity and production and taking care  of clients that it was the last thing on my   mind but i knew that i was falling behind and  i needed to see where things were at because   i i just didn't know where my business was if i  was profitable i knew lots of money was coming in   um but i didn't know if i was actually making  any money at the end of the day needless to say   got the books cleaned up took a while  was a process had a bookkeeper in place   and uh you know it became very evident that  i was you know losing money here uh things   weren't stacking up the way that i thought it  was and i had to kind of clean house and change   things around and and realize that um i would  have been in some pretty big you know trouble   if i would have left things for too long so  extremely important to check your key financials   uh another thing is overhead and cost of goods  sold so overhead what's your burn rate every   month you know whether you're doing zero dollars  in sales or two hundred thousand dollars in sales   every month you know what is your your overhead  that you're going to be spending regardless right   you need to know what your burn rate is and your  overhead per job make sure that you're collecting   uh the right amount of overhead for the sales that  you're doing in order to keep the lights on and   keep the wheels rolling on your business cost of  goods sold uh you should understand what it is and   your bookkeeping should be categorized in a way  that you can easily see your cost of goods sold   you know all this the line items your your labor  your materials all that kind of stuff as well as   easily see the overhead uh in your bookkeeping  so all the expenses that are not tied to like   specific job or to production so if that sounds  confusing uh you know ask your bookkeeper ask   your accountant uh myself i just know this from  a business standpoint and i've done it myself i'm   not you know a certified bookkeeper accountant  or anything like that i just know enough from   from running enough businesses and seeing uh  helping coach other clients through it usually   it's one of the first things when i when i coach  new clients is we clean up their books and get a   real sense of their numbers and like okay great  you want to scale you want to build you know um   wrap up sales or maybe you just want to get  more efficient well we need to see the numbers   what can you afford right now right can you  afford to put money into advertising if you   ramp up you know are you actually profitable  if you're scaling a non-profitable business   you're just going to be that much more  not profitable so it's a horrible idea   if you don't have your finances in place if you  are not running an efficient effective business   to scale it's the worst thing you can do because  you're essentially just going to build more debt   and more of a disorganized and crummy business so  make sure that these are in place before you start   to look at expanding and growing and you know  changing things up all right number four personal   budgeting you should be doing this for yourself  you should be doing your own bookkeeping   uh personally outside of your business or have a  bookkeeper or someone doing it for you know your   monthly budget no way you can afford because  if you start spending money and thinking that   oh i'm just going to buy a new car a new boat new  house go on a trip i've been waiting you know 10   years to take the family on this vacation to you  know around the world or wherever you want to do   and it seems great because you got a lot of  money in the bank but if you're not watching   your finances and get in the habit of just  spending because you think times are good   and you're creating money in your business uh you  can run into big problems and you should know what   your personal finances personal budget needs to  be try to eliminate expenses and make sure that   you're you know living with inside your means and  that you are wealth building right the profit that   you're pulling from your business i mean it should  be um you should have your owner's draw that's   taking care of your your monthly expenses  and you should know how much that is whether   it's a few thousand or a few tens of thousands  depending on your lifestyle and your business   but you should know what that is and live inside  your budget and then there should be a healthy   chunk of profit that you're pulling out of  the business and you're putting into wealth   building so this could be um you know long term  for retirement investments um maybe you know   someday starting a different business or whatever  but then you should be pulling money profits out   of your business and putting that into wealth  building long term that's you become wealthy   that's how you become unbreakable as far as not  being reliant on the income just for your business   but you actually have passive investments that  can provide you lifestyle and the income you need   should something happen to your business so if you  take care of these four points you're gonna be an   amazing financial position get your bookkeeping  right get your finances right if you want help   with this or more details about specifics and  how to set these systems up in your business   reach out to me there's links in the description  below there's also links to to connect with me as   well as build a business that works without you  free course that you can download get the course   for yourself it's a wealth of information there  how to start systematizing your business how to   how to build a business right you've been building  houses building whatever doing electrical plumbing   concrete whatever you do for  a living in your business   learn how to build a business not just build  houses all the best take care of your finances