https://junkremovalauthority.com/. Knowing your numbers and keeping up with your books is super important and vital to your success and well being in business. Lee gives a basic rundown of Quickbooks operations for junk removal businesses.

Okay guys, well do a quick little video here. It’s actually not going to be that quick but will be very important. One of things I want to talk about is how important it is to know your numbers and to be making sure you keep numbers for your counting and to make sure you are paying taxes and all that kind of stuff. So, if you’re skipping over your bookkeeping, which is a very common thing to do when somebody first goes to business. You are really setting yourself up to headaches and potentially trouble in the future. So right off the bat, the book keeping is easiest when you first started. And its easiest to get started when you first started. If you’ve been in business for several months, or year or something like that, and all of a sudden you try and do book keeping together just because your taxes are due, then it’s going to be very difficult to get everything done correctly like it should be. Keeping it legal and the tax man happy all that kind of stuff. So, we’ll do a quick screen share right here, run though some common things on QuickBooks this is by no means a thorough course on using QuickBooks. You need to learn on how to use QuickBooks separately, but this video will show you how it relates to a Junk Removal business will kind of highlight the fact the QuickBooks is not difficult, it just takes a little bit of practice and it’s fairly intuitive with is basic accounting knowledge. I mean no accounting all that well to top rate QuickBooks.

 

So here we go, hey guys, right now you are looking at a fake Junk Removal company, we just called it the Junk Removal Co. The chart of accounts for a typical Junk Removal company has been uploaded into this account. But let’s just roll right into some common things that you are going to do, if you are using Vaughn Ago, this that you would need a separate video if you’re using any sort of scheduling or invoicing software that syncs with QuickBooks. The way you operate is going to be different. You still need to know all this information because from time to time you will still go about it this way. This is really aimed at, this is the kind of small time operator is just getting going by using paper, invoices still like we did for probably three or four years and then taking and keeping up with that paperwork and taking time at the end of the day or one day, a week or whatever to get everything entered into the system. The very first thing let’s say if you did a job for a customer and they did not pay you and you need to enter an invoice, so you click the plus symbol in there and then you click invoice. There we go in this book and this will pop up and let’s say it was for Joe Schmo, they click add Joe Schmo. If you want to enter into detail as you can well typically if you’re just copying. Well your invoice seeing this customer so you would want to go ahead and enter an address 123 ABC Avenue, let’s say Raleigh NC 27606, email address joe@schmo.com and this will get that email sent off to him. We’ll click save and then from this point, whatever the day at this job occurred let’s say the job occurred on May 28th, that’ll be the invoice date and the due date if it’s net 30 you select the net 30 as you see the due date comes up there. Now, online payments are not set up here. I would encourage you to go ahead and select you know one payment set-up and select both of these accept cards as well as free bank transfer. Always make it easy on your people to pay you. So, you come down here to product/service. Generally, we just have one item where any of those stuff in now we do have to add this new because we copied over the chart of accounts but not the products and services. Now just know we call it like Junk Removal like Junk Removal business, click add Junk Removal it is a service category we just kind of ignore that come down just make sure it says sales which it does. The price you enter in the description you are in right, now you can do multiple price points like you knew half load, quarter load or third load if you want to do just Junk Removal when we hand it right now with Vaughn Ago and see that’s because our invoicing software does it for us but you would actually would want to if you’re doing it separate, you would want do different items like half load. The reason being where you can run a report and see kind of what’s your average or job size you do the most of and all that sort of deal. You go ahead and put in price so I say your half load is 325, sales information load of Junk Removal saves and close. And that will put us in here, all that looks correct you’ll click save and send and it’s going to email off to joe@schmo.com. Now, once Joe gets this if you would like to pay it by either card or bank transfer, there will be a link where he’ll be over to do that you need to click send again but this might throw an error message up since we did this not been set up for online payment. It did it but anyway Joe will get that and if he wants to follow through and pay he can or he can mail you and check and you’ll have this app set up where your address is listed up on the invoice. So that is if you do a job for the customer your invoicing them they haven’t. Now majority of what we recommend JRA is to collect money while you’re at the job that’s pretty much all residential customers will invoice businesses but residential customers we try to always get money while were there the easiest thing to do at that point actually tell you what instead of skipping around here let’s say he’s made the payment, then what you need to do is if he has made the payment is come over here to invoicing and you can see his invoice right here. You can also go to the plus symbol and click receive payment, and then at that point you can type in the customer’s name Joe Schmo there’s Joe and what he owes so in this case I say he makes the payment today let’s say he made it by cheque, I’m going to Put the cheque number in let’s say it’s 1234 .The amount received is let’s say I’m hitting the tab button right here, that’s skips me around that’s a quick little ray way to operate with QuickBooks so you got 325, make sure all that matches up and your balance down here where you don’t have anything left over as a credit. All of this looks good and is entered then you can click save and close if you’re only earning in 1.

 

OK so let’s say now you did that residential job and collect a payment and the paper invoice already reflects that you got payment information on it. Your paper invoice should show the date of the job and the price of the job, how it was paid, and that sort of deal. So, what you need right here is the sales receipt because what you have to do if there’s an invoice you have to think and go back in and enter a payment as well. So, you’ve got two steps in there, well in this case if you did all the job and you collect the payment at the same time just go to sales receipt. Let’s say we’ve got another job for Joe this time he was at his house and he paid. Let’s say you’ve got Joe Schmo and let’s say it’s half load got 325 right there and then you can click save and close. So, I always just you know verify all this information or the actual date of the job you want to do that so your P & L and her financial reports appear correctly everything else pretty straightforward though. So, you can send them a receipt if you’d like by clicking save and send if you don’t want to send a receipt, just click save and close. Now say you need some bills to enter so what we do is we have accounts payable and accounts receivable bin so. We don’t have accounts payable bin anymore. All that’s done electronically now. Our accounts payable been is literally an organizer that sits on our bookkeepers Desks and the bills we get it get placed in there and then we have one email address that all invoices are sent to so I suggest having an email that all you do get invoices to you can have it forward to your regular email but that way when it comes time to pay bills. You’re not having to sit through a million different emails you just go straight to that rate that invoice email and you pay your bills. We recommend paying bills once a Week any more than that it’s a lot of times you’re just wasting time it takes you awhile to get things set up and get to bill paying mode so we pay bills on every Thursday and we just always make sure that you know we’re paying attention to do dates and were mailing out any checks that are going to come due within the next days or so.

 

You know this bill first thing you do is to come up here to bill you Click the plus symbol get about everything you won’t do the plus symbol and let’s say you’re playing Duke Energy again this is a new account fake account Duke Energy will input their address. It’s like 10456 East Tryon. I’m guessing this I know it’s wrong but it’s actually someone Close Lord Blvd., Charlotte 28226 something like that,  don’t really matter baby don’t need to enter in the email address for the Duke Energy you click save and then whatever the date of the bill so the invoice date is what this will be let’s say that this was May 23 and the due date whatever it is you will input let’s say it’s due June 14 I ‘ll input in the bill number as well. So, entering just some random numbers here and this would be his utilities, right here is the expense and then the amount I will say are you did was $150 for that particular month and then at that point let’s click save and new didn’t see it one more time let’s say this is the Dirty Landfill you do the details one more time 123 dirty road and dirty 656. This would be your disposal fees for that month is $3000 so you get somewhere around 34 or $35,000 for the sales that money if you’re having $3000 in disposal and that’s the only landfill which you won’t use just one month but this is theoretical. OK let’s say that we’ve got expenses in there so that’s close that out you got the bills and third so those pills are going to ride in there until you ready to pay them now we were fairly late on paying bills for the more Jordie of like your Duke energy is and you know large landfills and county stuff, stuff like that. We turn things in just a few days before it’s due credit card bills car payments that sort of stuff do you independent guys like we got a mechanic and some of the smaller operations that do stuff for you and jump on stuff really quick. We’d like to pay them immediately because they really respect that I’m there a lot more likely to go ahead and make your work a priority they know they’re not going to have to wait around when you’re paying an invoice. So, the county really matters for them you know the big outfits doesn’t matter at that point you just want to make sure you’re not late so it doesn’t affect your credit with them or more credit score all that good stuff obviously. Now we want to pay these bills let’s say it’s now time to pay them, so we click again the plus mark click pay bills you’re going to see your two Bills right here do clean Dirty landfill and Duke energy this is the checking account were going to use right here the payment date whatever day you’re going to cut this check we’ll keep it at June first. First starting check number will say it’s 1001 you’re going to select both of these you should input in the whatever you’re going to pay bill having here. So generally you pay the stuff if it’s a credit card you might do or potentially pay less and then you come over here and click save and print and again you click into your account and it’s going to ask you that kind of stuff so let’s try it one more time so this brings us to the project starting check number always verify the starting number right before you click anything when it comes to doing much with QuickBooks always verify all the information right because if this gets off it’s much harder to go back into the chart of Account or the register and correct the stuff. It’s a lot easier to make sure it’s done correctly at the start. So right here all this look right landfill Duke energy click preview and print.  will print will click the print icon in here. As you see you have two checks you insert the checks into your printer we’re not going to print but you would the just click print right here and that would run the checks through. After you click X it’s going to ask if everything printed ok you click done if they did and if they did not wear and only some of the checks messed up select which check numbers messed up won’t printing and if not then click no keep all checks in the print checks list and you can access that later. All the print check again is in the plus icon if you just want to access the checks need to be printed just come down to plus and print checks. So, the next thing that is important is your profit and loss statement this isn’t going to look like a whole lot because very few expenses and entered in here but you go over here to report you click profit and loss. At that point you that say you want to pull it for the month, I’m trying to remember what our income was. Let’s keep it a year, you want to do it in the month you just click and run report.

 

No, we didn’t have any expenses this month so let’s keep of the year but the other thing you’ll do is when you run this report and click row/column, click percent of income, click year to date and click run report. When you break it down here we got so this will show you right here since we’ve clicked year to date to see exactly how we’re looking for the month. Obviously, there is no expenses listed here. You’d normally have expense, so you’ll see how you’re doing for the month and you’ll come over here because of how you are doing for the entire year. Then what are your expense percentages, now as a percentage of income this is showing for the month not for the year. Let’s click this year and obviously these are so far out there not even being close to correct. As you can see right here disposal fees are 461.54% you want to see this. This what I’m always talking about what are your percentages numbers so your disposal person just you tried somewhere around 8 to 10% depending on your market. You might be able to get a little less than that if you’re really heavy on recycling and selling items or if you’re up disposal fees are particularly cheap and you’re in the market with not a whole lot of competition but you’re going to figure something out 8 or 9% generally on your disposal fees. If you’re first starting and doing a lot of deals that could be higher and then your fuel expense is going to be somewhere around 6 or 7% now that is an app so we might have to raise prices some jobs are poor they came out our day was great so will start out itching prices of yourself Wages are rising too.  Anyway, that’s how you run your profit and loss statement that’s a very important statement but it’s not going to show you how much cash are you bringing in and out.

 

If you come back to report list, one of my favorite reports is the statement of cash flows. So, let’s look at this entire year right here the statement of cash flows. You want to see this be a positive number generally, you are always looking for positive this means that your profit and loss statement when you’re paying principal on a loan it does not count against your profit and loss. So, if you have a bunch of loads going out around several thousand dollars you’re paying on 3000 a month on loans and you’re showing a profit on P&L statement of $4000 it’s very well possible you’re going to gain $2000 in cash that’s not necessarily the case you need to know a lot more because that also counts for receivables. Let’s say you had a slower month than you did in the previous month but you have a lot of receivables come in then, the receivables are going to account for your cash flows in the month. you got to have positive cash flow in order to survive that’s also going if you hit up a line of credit for $10,000 it’s going to add 10 K To your cash flow. Cash flow is showing that you’re going to keep or maintain enough cash to keep running your business. This is a very important financial statement one we always play close attention to. The balance sheet you need to learn how to read a balance sheet. This doesn’t show like a whole lot here because we don’t have anything really entered. But a balance sheet if you have issues with your books, you can always find it in your balance sheet so you need to do separate research on how to read a Balance sheet. Those are the main reports you can use. Now QuickBooks has a lot of other different types of reports take a look and some of them you’ll definitely use but the P&L, balance sheet and statement of cash flows, you need to have that monthly. You need to know exactly what you’re doing and review that P&L closely and if you have any expense percentages getting out. You need to investigate what’s going on or might need to raise your prices you might somebody on their coding jobs or might have some theft going on or might have a truck that’s having maintenance problems and using up a lot more fuel. There’s all kinds of stuff that can be going on and your financial statements will tell the story.

 

One report you want to do which you want to keep at least weekly or to be reviewing what’s called your AR report, that’s accounts receivables that people, owe money. So, as you start doing more jobs for commercial companies table be wanting you to invoice them they won’t pay on the spot so you need to get reports and click accounts receivable aging detail. Now everybody that we have invoiced in this fake account has paid, so it’s not going to show anything. But let’s say that Joe Schmo, we invoiced him. Let say we he hasn’t paid, it’s going to show you what let’s make this quick let’s do a quick invoice for this will do another one for Joe Schmo. Let’s make it April 1st and the due is May 1st. The amount of $1000 and you would normally click save and we’re going to click save and close. Hopefully nobody has joe@schmo.com if not, I’m sure they get a lot of spam. And then all of a sudden, they are you see you this AR aging detail.  You got 31 to 60 days passed to, it’s going to break it down to current. Anybody that’s not overdue you’ve got 31 to 60 days overdue you call 60 to 90 and over 90 is how generally and every week their need to have a system in place. This is what a part of what the JRA business package covers and I can’t cover something and not consulting calls to on how to collect money but this is a problem. This is an issue we had at one point and you’ve got to stay on top of your accounts receivable every week. It’s a very big issue to have and there has been times we’ve had for $60,000 in the account receivable and that’s too much. Too much for Junk Removal business done a lot better job ever since hired a full-time bookkeeper to keep up with that stuff. But back when we were trying to balance work on the truck and Scheduling guys of repairing vehicles and all that kind of stuff. You also need to do a little demolition and we were trying to do the books on our own get behind on the AR all the time but a full-time bookkeeper solves that.

 

Junk Removal Authority will be offering bookkeeping services for Junk Removal businesses in the near future we don’t yet but that is a service were definitely going to provide.  It should be priced very competitively and then you got people, the only few things those are bookkeepers are going to be doing Junk Removal stuff we will be releasing that out pretty soon.

 

Guys this has been a very brief rundown on accounts receivable and I will also tell you can sync bank accounts credit cards and that sort of stuff can be synced and all those expenses Will get entered in automatically if they cannot sync some platforms don’t sync especially fuel cards. You’ll have to actually enter in it has an expense once You get on your bank statement or look online for online banking expense to exactly like we entered in that check or bill just always verify the information enter how they paid cash check credit card what date you receive the payment all that kind of stuff and you stay on top of.

 

I hope everybody enjoyed that it was a very brief overview of QuickBooks majority of people when you first get started especially you can do all of your QuickBooks on your own it does have the capability of doing payroll as well it’s not hard at all and I’m happy to show everybody Individually that if you’re going to do a consult call in all about that in an hour we can run through how to do a payroll and all that sort of deal. I want to make it clear to everybody don’t skip your books. It’s also a hell a lot harder to grow your business when you’re skipping over at your book because you’re not entirely certain how much money you’re really making. Especially those that are getting cash or straight in the pocket and you’re not reporting in all that kind of stuff or tracking it especially we report everything. Now all the money gets reported and we don’t sleep in any cash or withhold any cash from going on those reports when I tell people that it’s surprises a lot of people but that has been one of the biggest things we can attribute our success to is the fact that the track everything. I mean I can just read off every single percentage down to a half a percentage each one once I look at the P & L statement I look at it through the month I memorize those numbers I know what they should be and what they’re currently at and then if there’s a problem. We’ve recently had a problem it turned out to be theft we figure out what’s going on but we fixed it. But you don’t know you’ve got a problem until you know your numbers if you don’t know your numbers unless you’re keeping up with your account with your bookkeeping correctly. If you got any questions at all guys you can email me at lee@junkremovalauthority.com and if you need any help whatsoever you call the office at +1 919-466-9322.

 

Thanks guys you all have a great weekend!