Keep Your Books Accurate With Quickbooks FSM Integration
In terms of your financials and accounting, what’s most important to your field service organization? Some might say (maybe with a hint of humor) “Making sure we make a lot of money.” That’s a good goal! (Although in all honesty, your real goal should be good customer service — and the money will flow from that.)
The real answer to this question is “accuracy.” If your financials and accounting aren’t accurate, you open your business to a whole host of problems, from angry customers to penalties from the IRS. It’s important to be precise and focus on details in all aspects of business, but in financials and accounting, it’s crucial.
If you run a small business FSO, there’s a good chance you use Quickbooks for accounting: the software has a roughly 80% market share among SMBs.
Quickbooks is a great system, but like any technology, it’s prone to error based on the humans who input and move around the data.
If you use Quickbooks and accuracy of data is a concern, the next step in this process is: why is it a concern?
Typically, inaccurate data comes from one major issue: lack of communication among internal partners. Usually the financial and accounting data will be managed by someone in one of those departments, but if you’re a small shop, there’s a chance the same person who runs financials also does customer data — and heck, that person might even be your HR rep and your VP all at once. That’s the nature of a small business.
For financials to be accurate, though, all the customer information, employee hours, technician hours, and technician overtime needs to be accurate.
The easiest way to do this, typically, is to have one system that houses everything — as opposed to a paper-and-pen system where necessary elements are in different filing cabinets, or even a system where different people in your office use different technologies to achieve their main tasks (someone on Google vs. someone on Microsoft, for example).
Usually the easiest way to keep everything in one place is to use a FSM software tool. These integrate the different aspects of your business. So now scheduling information, and technician overtime, can be one screen away from customer data and sales leads.
This helps makes your financials more accurate, which is the most crucial element of your financials.
The next benefit to accurate financials is that your company can have a more detailed look at its revenue stream — and whether or not it’s a revenue generator. FSM software usually helps along this process for small business field service shops. If you’d like to know a little bit more about how FSM software can act as a revenue generator, download our eBook now. If you have any specific questions about your business model or location, let us know.
