Please forgive me for adding yet another thread to the accountancy debate. Its just that I am trying to find some accounting software that I work out profitability with. I'm not just talking on each job where I could get an estimator like Liberate, I'm talking a piece of accounting software that I can assign a job code to materials, labour, design, in fact anything relating to that particular job so I can work out a particular jobs profitability.
Furthermore, I want to be able to be able to add the generic costs of the business like stationary, phone bills, tools, web site etc which will not appear anywhere else. In essence working out a daily or hourly cost to actually run the back end of the business for which I can apportion an amount to each job on a scaled rate.
I cannot seem to find anything other than some farming accounting software which actually does something similar working out profitability by field or by animal for instance.
Please can anyone give me an insight into how you do this? Do you all guess at the costs... or is it me just looking at this from a completely different angle (as per usual!). At present, the nearest I can get is to Sage 50 which does tend to cost an arm and a leg, but still does not do exactly what I want...
Thanks...
Andy
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We use quickbooks pro. I have spent the last 3 months inputting and inputting and inputting loadddddssss of data. I also believe it does some of what you are asking for. Although i have only used it for 3 months I have noticed that it can generate many reports really easily concerning our accounts- really useful reports like what material is selling the most or how much we have spent on office resources etc
It's quite hard to explain in writing but if you want to call me (Susan) on Monday on the number on our profile then I would be happy to answer your questions so you can see if it is any use to you.
Susan
I've only been on this forum a few hours but I am impressed with the high level of business owner on here. You are a real nerd Andy, in a good way! In reality I don't think anyone has really accurate data in any business to this level of granularity but I think you can make a run at it.
It's complicated because you don't always get paid for the work you do. e.g. quoting.
My 10p worth.
Add up all your costs - you don't need any software for this just an excel sheet - and estimate any others you can't get accurate figures for. e.g. hourly cost of petrol.
So, for example
Monthly costs for:
Telephone
Office
Gas and electricity
Office staff wages
Insurances
Marketing
Equipment servicing and replacement
Sundries
A simple way to do it is then to just divide these costs by the amount of hours you're active. Which gives you an hourly business overhead cost of 'x'.
You then incorporate 'x' into all of your jobs depending on how many hours you are at the job.
You can refine it to make it more accurate because obviously a job that takes 3 days won't cost you as much in petrol for instance as 5 jobs of 3 hours each in different locations. But it's a start.
this data doesn't even have to go into an accounts package. You can add 'x' into your front end workflow system as a cost and then it should export into whatever accounting package you're using.
What did you choose in the end please?