Large Commercial contracts starting out

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EcoMax

Forum Newbie
Hello guys I'm new here and to lawn care. My question really isn't about mowing,equipment,how to run a business or my competition. My question to you guys is what business software are you using? I am employed full time outside of lawn care and picked up a few very large commercial jobs this year and wanted to utilize technology to keep track of expenses etc and relieve my burden at tax time and also something that will have a pretty good P&L sheet..... It is 2016 and I might move completely into this market, commercial with emphasis on "Going green" if I can make the numbers work. Thanks for the help!!!!

Mike Chavis
EcoMax INC
 
And because I am Mac based I use MYOB which was the only business softwear available for this platform way back in the 80's.
If I was doing the same thing now I would be looking at some of the freewear as MYOB has become way too bloated and two expensive for small business.
Most important is to make sure you paper system works before you put it on computer because all the computer will do with a badly set up system is to accelerate the downfall.

If you are going to try to work paperless then the magic word is backup, backup backup & backup.
Buy a carton of flash drives and label 7 of them with the days of the week ( a lot cheaper that way)
then 5 more marked W1 through to w5 ( weekly back ups )
and 12 more labled with months according to your financial year.

I did not do this an paid the price having to reconstruct a full year of trading on more than one occasion ( slow learner ).
I now run MYOB on a totally seperate computer, which is not connected to the web and has 2 internal hardives and 3 external hard drives set up as mirrors.
Only 1 of the external drives is ever connected to the computer at any 1 time thus the other 2 become the "last week" and "last month" active back up.
Because they are mirror drives, when any one is plugged in the computer will automatically update it in the background whie the computer is turned on.

Whatever you do, do not under any circumstances go with any "cloud" based system none of them are secure.
The other trick that I found works, is to never open any mail or write a cheque unless I am sitting in front of the computer, in fact the computer actually writes all my cheques.
I connect it to the web, download the emails, send orders and make cedit card payments then pull the plug and work off line.
While this might sound silly it ensures that everything goes into the "box"and you are not chasing a missing item at the end of the month when accounts do not reconsile.

A customer who was a book keeper who showed me another trick which is to set up your company with all the accounts, then export them into another file which you work from.
At the end of the financial year, you export the account list again, add your current amounts as the opening balances the use this data file for current financial year.
Thus you can go back and fix up problems from last year without affecting this year.
 
EcoMax said:
Hello guys I'm new here and to lawn care. My question really isn't about mowing,equipment,how to run a business or my competition. My question to you guys is what business software are you using? I am employed full time outside of lawn care and picked up a few very large commercial jobs this year and wanted to utilize technology to keep track of expenses etc and relieve my burden at tax time and also something that will have a pretty good P&L sheet..... It is 2016 and I might move completely into this market, commercial with emphasis on "Going green" if I can make the numbers work. Thanks for the help!!!!

Mike Chavis
EcoMax INC
Click to expand...

I think BlazNT and Lawnboy18 gave you some good options and my advice is to keep simple, don't make it something it's not. Get something you can install on your desk top and that can use the cloud as well as have mobile flexibility. There are different options available online that you can get accounting software for free or at a monthly fee and use fairly cheap.
 
When I said Simply, I was talking about Simply Accouting (Simple Comptable). It is a wonderful software for accounting. Yes, it is pricey, but worth every penny! Trust me!

If you have a MAC, no problem. Intsall Parallel and Windows and you are good to go. Do backup copies on a USB key or external hardrive for a good backup.

A part from that, keep it simple yes.
 
Lawnboy18 said:
When I said Simply, I was talking about Simply Accounting (Simple Compatible). It is a wonderful software for accounting. Yes, it is pricey, but worth every penny! Trust me!

If you have a MAC, no problem. Install Parallel and Windows and you are good to go. Do backup copies on a USB key or external hardrive for a good backup.

A part from that, keep it simple yes.
Click to expand...

To many people make things to technical and complicated, that's why I said keep it simple. The Simply Accounting or the Quick-books Self- Employed either are good programs. Quicken also has a Home and Business program that I'll bet would be a real good program, there's a ton of stuff that's available. A lot of small business guys even create there own systems using Google or Excel spreadsheets. It all depends on how big you want to make your business and how much money you want to spend.
 
True. I just wanted to let people know what I use and like. Simply is used by small and big companies. It is really versatile.
 
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