I'm looking for a good bookkeeping system for logging. I need something that can handle enter loads, footage, price, stumpage and jobs in addition to basic expenses. I am also expanding into land buying for timber management and need something for that too, hopefully that I can tie into the logging side of things. I just got Quickbooks Premier with industries and am still learning it. But from what I can see so far I'm not sure whether it'll do what I'm looking for all under one roof, so to speak. Any thoughts?
A good wage, benitites and give her a shoe box full of papers! No just kidding but I do believe paper work will make or break u. Someone will have something on here I'd think.
I use an Excel spreadsheet with formulas I developed through the years. Works great as long as you keep it updated in a timely manor.
Ive always made excel spreadsheets for my previous businesses. A credit and debit side with a column to enter each expense or income by type. Each column tallies, and then across the tally row is also tallied into a total for that side.
So punch a $100 fuel reciept in its column, click enter. The fuel column updates the total fuel expense, which changes the total overall expense and then that is compared to the total on the income side and spits out a profit or loss into the how my doin box.
Its how i figure out when i need to buy more deductibles on the fly. Anytime theres a profit.
Timber tracker is a good mobile app for estimating board footage etc.
May not work for your business but I use yardbook.com for my stump grinding business.
I use intuit QuickBooks. I went Through a couple training courses to figure it out completely and still don't know how to use all the tools . But it's simple to enter everything in and if you have employees it skips like 100 steps for you and does all the calculations on the fly.
This is a logging business software package that may be of interest: http://www.stumpgeek.com/
I'm not sure if it will help with the land purchase end of things.
Oldmil
My two cents... (that hopefully turn into two dollars for you)
I've always found that a good accountant earns their money and then some. They're an investment that pays back. Tax deductions, clean and tidy books, moving money the right way, keeping up on tax; all worth their time.
Agreed. If you arent good friends with an attorney and an accountant, youve still got work to do. Both have saved my hide.