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Is your HVAC business still running on a pen and paper system? Or in one huge Microsoft Excel sheet? While this might work in the early days of a new business, growing HVAC companies need something more robust to stay on top of schedules and billing. Adding QuickBooks to your business toolkit will save you time and hassle on financial tasks, streamlining several essential tasks. Small business owners across the US and Canada rely on QuickBooks to manage their finances. Users can tackle billing, bookkeeping, employee hours and pay, and a lot more with QuickBooks. With 29 million (and counting) business owners using the platform, a ton of add-ons have sprung up around QuickBooks to help adapt it to any kind of work, including HVAC. In fact, with the right setup, HVAC businesses can get a lot of mileage out of QuickBooks. Advanced settings and add-ons help you address HVAC-specific needs while relying on the QuickBook accounting capabilities. Not sure how to get started? Follow these 5 steps.
1. Hire a bookkeeper.
If you want to keep your own focus on HVAC, you should consider hiring a dedicated bookkeeper to operate QuickBooks on behalf of your company. This may seem like overkill, but this person can do more than simple bookkeeping. Your QuickBooks office user can also serve as a scheduler and dispatcher, answering phones, setting appointments, and tracking work orders.Once you find the right person to fill this role, the position will pay dividends in terms of efficiency. Hiring a dedicated office team also puts your business on track for some major growth. Don't know which version of QuickBooks to get started with? We've got you covered! Check out our handy buyer's guide.After selecting and installing the version of QuickBooks that makes the most sense for your business, your bookkeeper should help you migrate your existing financial data. This will include information like:
- Your contact information
- Your legal entity information, if you have an LLC
- Transactions from your bank account
- Customer data
- Product information
- Employee data
- Tax forms
- Vendors
Once you've got all this in QuickBooks, you can move on to the next step!
2. Familiarize yourself with QuickBooks.
Explore the QuickBooks interface after your bookkeeper sets up the account. You don't need to become a QuickBooks expert, but you do need a basic understanding of the platform. Get to the point where you know enough about it to have an intelligent, informed conversation with your bookkeeper. Fortunately, QuickBooks offers a seemingly unending YouTube channel filled with startup guides, FAQs, how-tos, and more. Spend a few hours a month learning about QuickBooks so you can better communicate with your bookkeeper.
3. Set up QuickBooks Payments.
A big part of running any business? Getting paid. As your business grows and adds dedicated HVAC scheduling software to QuickBooks, you'll ultimately replace the QuickBooks merchant service with a better one, but if you just want to tackle one program at a time, you can start with QuickBooks Payments. This feature helps you send invoices and process payments.Get started by creating a QuickBooks Merchant account. QuickBooks Payments is technically free, but it does charge a processing fee. This fee is usually pretty standard, ranging from 1% to 4%.
4. Track your money and run reports.
You can start tracking your money once you’ve set up your account and begun accepting payments. Your bookkeeper should do most of the heavy lifting here, running important reports that measure the health of your business. Your bookkeeper should analyze:
- Expenses
- All business accounts, including credit cards and savings accounts
- Income
- Invoices
- Employee hours
Your bookkeeper should run a monthly profit and loss (P&L) statement with this information. This report gives you a sky-high view of your HVAC business’ performance, comparing expenses against the business’ income. See how profitable you were and which expense categories hindered your growth.
5. Get serious with a scheduling add-on.
Congrats! You’ve covered your bases and set up QuickBooks. Now that your QuickBooks is good to go, take the final step to making it an HVAC powerhouse by adding the HVAC scheduling software Smart Service. Smart Service helps you run every aspect of your HVAC operation more smoothly, including:
- Scheduling and dispatch
- Work orders
- Customer management
- Inventory
- Equipment information
- Service routes
- Digital forms
- Preventative maintenance agreements
- Collecting and processing payments
- Tracking employee time
- ...and more!
The Smart Service app helps you schedule work, dispatch employees, and handle work orders, all while integrating with QuickBooks. Log your job details with each customer’s information, avoid double-bookings, and offer more accurate billing with Smart Service for QuickBooks. Whatever you’re using for your HVAC business today, you’ll likely see more time and money savings with a popular accounting tool like QuickBooks. Tailor your account to your precise needs with advanced add-ons like Smart Service to secure even more wins for your HVAC business.
