How Bookkeepers Can Get Cleaner Records From Service Business Clients

Service businesses are some of the hardest clients a bookkeeper has. The owner spends the day on job sites, not at a desk. The paperwork waits until the month is over, and so does your work.

The usual result is a shoebox month. Receipts, bank deposits and handwritten invoices arrive together, and you spend hours working out which deposit paid which job.

Most of that time goes on one question: what happened, and when. The answer is to have each piece recorded when it happens, not pieced together weeks later.

Start with the invoice. Ask the owner to send every invoice from software, never from a paper pad or a text message. A numbered invoice with a date and a customer is something you can match later.

Next, ask for each payment to be recorded against the invoice it pays. Card and bank payments taken through invoicing software usually do this on their own. Cash and checks need the owner to mark the invoice paid the same day.

Then ask for receipts as they happen. A photo taken in the truck right after a purchase beats a crumpled receipt found in a pocket at the end of the month.

Finally, agree on one day each month when the owner checks that every job has an invoice. A job done and never invoiced is lost money for the owner and a gap in the books for you.

QuoteSchedulePay is built for owners who run their business from a phone. It keeps each payment linked to its invoice, each invoice to its job, and each job to its quote. An owner can connect QuickBooks, Xero or FreshBooks, and QSP sends each invoice when it is sent and each payment when it is received.

Your QSP bookkeeper account is free, and adding you does not add a paid user to the owner's account. You can create one at qsphq.com/bookkeepers.