Wilmington NC Small Business Accountant discusses QuickBooks Setup and Flexibility

If you'd like a free initial consult on QuickBooks setup or training, please call us at (910) 399-2705.

As a CPA who knows the Wilmington NC area, I get calls for specialized projects requiring local expertise. Here’s an example demonstrating how QuickBooks setup can make business easier. Especially when integrated with Excel.

Scenario: a new sand mine operation north of Wilmington NC. The land was owned by real estate developer planning a lakeside subdivision So the sand had to be dug out and sold. We’ll call the client Wilmington NC Widgets. WNW was engaged to sell and/or broker the sand, once it was dug. They also had to bill and collect for every cubic yard that left the mine. This involved hundreds of customers, numerous truck types (with different load capacities), multi layered pricing, and special deals. Daily cubic yardage reconciliations against the land firm’s sand pit figures were required. Wilmington NC Widgets made monthly payments to the real estate firm based on the cubic yardage, as calculated by them, and then confirmed by the sand pit’s CPA. Made by the 10th of the following monh BTW. There were incentive discounts to WNW based on monthly volume and bonuses for meeting cubic yardage aggregate figures by certain deadlines.

“Proper QuickBooks setup and Excel integration allowed the CPA to increase the mine’s choke point by 120 trucks a day, decrease time on reconciliations by about 85%, protect the employees from suspicion of diversion, bill customers more quickly, and, provide timely managerial information. Which translated into about 9% more profit.”

Wilmington NC Widgets had used a Microsoft Access application for the accounting in another mine. But they didn’t own it. The application also had glitches, and over time, complicated workarounds emerged, making it a nightmare to reconcile. Not really an Access problem, actually a bookkeeping or accounting problem.

I implemented an Intuit QuickBooks bookkeeping solution which ultimately allowed 360+ trucks a day, over 120 greater than the choke point in the old system, to be tallied, billed and reconciled with minimal effort. Wilmington NC Widgets, already owned QuickBooks, a new company file just had to be setup. Step one was really just proactively anticipating everything everyone expected, and then best setup QuickBooks to handle it.

How it worked: they simply generated a sequentially numbered invoice for each load, printed two copies and had the driver sign one. Several templates were created during QuickBooks setup for different types of customers. The item list in Quick Books was setup by truck type. It included the standard verbiage and customary cubic yardage of each truck type IE 1 Quad axle dump truck load of sand - 15 cubic yards. A modified QuickBooks Sales Report made the daily reconciliations a snap by reporting the day’s total loads by truck type. This report included the time when the invoice was generated. Once this QuickBooks report was setup, it was memorized complete with its modifications. Sequential invoice numbers that matched ongoing time values. So unreported loads could be detected by time gaps, not that this was ever a problem.

Plus the audit trail was turned on as part of QuickBooks setup. Therefore, the clerk from suspicion of pocketing cash by not reporting loads. For customers with balances, QuickBooks Statements were created.

Monthly, I exported a variation of the Wilmington NC Widgets QuickBooks sales report into Excel, from which I generated graphs of cubic yardage by day and month. Wireless networking allowed me to remain in Wilmington, or at least New Hanover County, instead of having to drive to the mine in Pender County. Aggregate cubic yardage was easily tracked. Data sorting within Excel made the cost differentials easy to total. What had taken 30+ hours at the old mine, took me less than two hours, despite greater reporting requirements. Additional data, delivered in real time, allowed WNW to make better informed managerial decisions which they exploited into about 9% greater profit. All possible because of proper QuickBooks setup.

Intuit QuickBooks is a relational database with a great user interface. It is moderately customizable via fields that can be setup in multiple areas. Combined with the power of Excel, a superb spread sheet, through easy exportation of QuickBook reports, elegant and cost effective solutions can be designed for non standard applications like a sand mine. But it takes planning. Otherwise even a QuickBooks solution can turn out to be a nightmare, like the Microsoft application at the old mine described above.

When you need a CPA with QuickBooks expertise, please call us for a free consult at (910) 399-2705.