Why Do Your Books Resemble “The Black Hole” Even Though You’re Paying Someone to Keep them? Here’s Why (& How to Fix It, Of Course).
Why the Books Are Still Chaotic (Even Though You’re Office Staff is Working on them Full Time)
Your staff is in the office every day, working hard to keep the books in order.
But no matter how many hours you and they put in, the financials are still a mess. You still can’t get the information you need when you need it, and when you do, you can tell by looking at it that it’s not right. Sound familiar?
I had a client once tell me when they first started working with us that they referred to their books as “The Black Hole” because they keep dumping data into the books but have no idea where it’s going and they can’t find anything once it goes in. Yikes.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re spinning your wheels and getting nowhere, you’re not alone— Your office staff feels the same way you do…and are maybe even more frustrated.
Construction bookkeeping can be a beast, and even the most dedicated financial ops coordinators can feel overwhelmed and experience burn out if we don’t handle what’s really going on.
So, What’s Really Going On?
These are the reasons all of the hard work isn’t working. See if you can relate to one or more of the following:
You’re office staff is stuck in reaction mode. You can’t get ahead when you’re always behind.
They’re running around putting out fires—chasing receipts, reconciling errors, deciphering meaning through partially communicated information from subs and project managers and scrambling to prepare reports. There’s no time for them to take a step back and set up a better system.
TOO Much - That’s what’s going on!
Between translating estimates into usable formats, figuring out who committed which cost to what code, attaching and cost coding the bills, tracking subcontractor bids, homeowner selections, change orders, and construction draw creation for investors, homeowners and their banks, there’s an entire mountain range of details to connect together and track!! That’s not even considering figuring out equipment allocations, if you have that, and more details like that. I’m tired just typing it. Construction accounting is a lot. There’s a lot to it - from the daily ops tracking, to the reconciliations and adjustments at the higher level, It’s just a lot of things.
You HAVE to have processes or things slip through the cracks, and those things eat away at your profits!
The tools you’re using aren’t built for construction. (Which partially explains why you’re always doing #1)
Your chosen tech and systems or lack of tech and lack of systems leaves your staff scrambling to come up with alternative methods on the fly.
As a result, they’re forced to piece together spreadsheets and workarounds on a whim, wasting hours every week. The workarounds that do stick are clunky and cumbersome, but at least it gets the job done… for the moment…and that’s all it does.
Your staff hasn’t had proper training…yet.
Let’s be real: When you hired your office staff, you just “threw” them into the deep end and hoped they would learn how to swim. I see this ALL. THE. TIME.
Just because you don’t have training doesn’t mean you can’t tell a broken system…or non-existent system when you see it. You KNOW there’s a better way…you just don’t know what that way is.
The Cost of Chaos - NO Systems + NO Training = NO Success.
Chaos is expensive, and here’s how you’ve been paying the bill:
Time - just hand it over. You and your staff are wasting hours up on hours, just giving it all to the chaos so the chaos can keep growing.
Stress - the chaos requires so much stress that you’re starting to dread going to work. If you wonder why you keep burning through office staff members, now you know.
Money - yep. The chaos your cultivating and keeping taking your money. Errors, lost billables, untracked committed costs, change orders not recorded or enforced… you’re paying all of that profit to your chaos.
Vision - Chaos is blinding. It’s hard to see your business direction when you’re in the weeds, let alone make wise business decisions.
NO MORE Black Hole
The Good News is I’m not going to leave you struggling like this. I’m happy to report my client’s books are clear as glass now - transparent, organized, and the source from which his extremely meaningful CEO Dashboard is created - and his business is SOARING.
Here’s how you’ll fix yours too - Listen to your Office Staff - Sit down with them and together, dump all of your pain points and frustrations on a piece of paper. List is all out. Use the list as a guide for the changes you choose to make in the following areas -
Upgrade Your Tools: Armed with the list and your office staff’s input, Choose and Use software designed specifically for construction bookkeeping to simplify your job. (We know of the best tools, if you need some help deciding)
Streamline Workflows: Looking at your list of pain points, see if you can group them into buckets with each bucket representing a different task or process used. You’re going to need to set up clear, repeatable processes for the various buckets. For example, if gathering all the bills in one place, knowing which job and which cost code they go to are all pain points, then you can group them into an Accounts Payable pain point bucket. Then seek to develop an organized, repeatable steps to follow that uses your tech tools and helps remove these pain points. Repeat this with all the buckets.
Invest in Training: There’s no simpler way to put it. You need to invest in training for your staff. Get them the guidance they need to understand construction-specific challenges and tackle them with confidence. They will love their work, work smarter and harder for your business, and feel valued in doing so.
Ask for Help: Sometimes, the best solution is bringing in experts who can clean up the mess and set up systems that work.
You Don’t Have to Do It Alone
Obviously, this is something we do for our clients every day. We specialize in helping financial ops coordinators eliminate chaos and create clarity.
Please reach out if you need help. It’s what we do and we love doing it!
