And I want to make sure I have all of my ducks in a row.
The big points:
- This will be a heavy/civil construction firm, doing both private and public work.
- I have only rudimentary training in accounting; maybe I should have listed that first.
- The firm I currently work for has hundreds of employees and a pretty slick job costing system (at least it seems so to me).
- The new firm will have probably 1 or 2 employees initially, and we hope to grow to a full crew at the end of our first year.
- We are planning to have in our "money going out" list the following: disbursements to owners, payroll, subcontractors, payments for materials and overhead-type expenses (phones, office stuff, etc.)
The big questions:
- Without many jobs (and many cost codes) active at once, this being a new firm and all, can I just make some kind of Excel workbook for each job, and then import that into a larger, purpose-built job costing software? Or is this just more headache than it's worth?
- Am I overthinking this? Should I sit down and consult with an accounting professional to see exactly what it is I need? The problem here is that I don't even know what I don't know.
- My knee-jerk reaction is Quickbooks or something like it because it seems to be the industry standard, but will it have all the stuff I need? Will I spend 0 on that, only to spend K AND have to re- enter the entire check register and invoice history?
I'm not trolling here. I just would like some general guidelines as to what direction I should be pointing in, and accountants seem to be the best group of folks to which I should ask accounting questions.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Phil Crow TItan of Industry