Small Shop Accounting SIMPLE!

0-4 employees

The difficulty with accounting packages is the designers keep adding new features to the point they have you doing way more than necessary to profitably run your business. (Just my take.)

The best system I ever had was very simple. It was Quick Books for DOS. It was when QB was simple.

I used accordian folders with twelve months written on them. I took the time to carefully number the months 1-12 because thats how computers do it.

I paid the people twice a month on the fifth (period 1-15) and twentyth (period 16-end).
That kept the payroll on a monthly basis. You can't keep up with weekly pay and monthly costs.

All the dated transactions were filed by date and were placed in the proper folder month. Invoices. p/o's, vendor bills everything.

The monthly reconciled checkbook was figured from the first to the last of the month and was also filed in the corrosponding month.

This whole idea was to use the computer to build an index by date fo all the transactions.

If you needed to look up an invoice for a part built sometime in the first quater of last year, You could put the p/n in the computer and look between the dates you built it and it would give you the month. Haul out the month's papers and with a bit of flipping you could find it.

You don't need alphabet files for customers and vendors. That's what the computer is for.

The only reason accountants have all the seperate fields for write offs is to find where they think you may be spending too much money. Fine for a large business, but do you really need to know how much you are spending on postage?

You really don't need too many more catagories than about ten.

Material, cutting tools, tooling, sales tax, withholding tax etc., etc. (wage related), outside processing, Capital equipment. And a few others.

Earnings, direct write offs ( rent, ulilities, outside labor, materials, cutting tools), short term depreciation (tooling (vises, indexers, etc.), long term depreciation (capital equipment, mills, lathes,etc.), Taxes.

If you can keep it simple it will be easy to learn about. It's YOUR! money.

Take care of it.

Best regards,

Stanley Dornfeld

I paid the people twice a month on the fifth (period 1-15) and twentyth (period 16-end).
That kept the payroll on a monthly basis. You can't keep up with weekly pay and monthly costs.

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I'll agree with this one 10000%. The shop I used to run was bi-weekly. Those two months out of the year that had three pay periods, the #s looked like shit.

Now, I get paid on the 10th and the 25th and my partner gets paid on the 2nd and 17th. Makes it really easy to figure constant monthly costs.

As the person getting the check, employee I guess. I find it a lot easier to do my monthly budget, all my bills are monthly. I do miss the two "bonus" checks per year, but the ease of knowing how much has to go where from each check far outweighs the 2 extra checks per year.

Metalcutter, you got it right.. No need for bells and whistles for a small shop.

My system is set up to function like yours, except that I use a spreadsheet (Excel) and can easily search via many criteria.

Simple is great. I'm a one man outfit and I use plain old Quicken 2006 for my records. All transactions go in the computer then I file the paper in manila folders for each month. So simple even -I- can keep up with it.

I do take the time to break down everything by category (yes, including postage/shipping) that way at the end of the quarter I just print a report and send it off to the bean counters.

--
Mike N

Wow! It looks like I struck some nerves.

I'm glad to find others who agree.

Anything which takes away from cutting metal needs to be streamlined.

If you could just take some of these existing software packages and "wring" out all the fluff, we could all get more done.

The spread sheet is very neat too. It's faster to log in data because you can enter repeating data faster by entering items vertically. You're not confined to change data type and jump all over the page in an effort to fill a form. I hope I explained this okay.

Thanks for the replies.

Best regards,

Stanley Dornfeld

rj newbould said:

Metalcutter, you got it right.. No need for bells and whistles for a small shop.

My system is set up to function like yours, except that I use a spreadsheet (Excel) and can easily search via many criteria.

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WOW! I read your "Mother of Invention." What a beautiful story! Congratulations!
Crack open the wine! I for one, and a bunch of others in here are very proud of you.

Now a little silent reverence............................. there.

I mean this!

Now my question, Did you get Excel to print a form invoice? I mean fill out an invoice form?

If so how big a job is it?

My very best regards to you,


Stanley Dornfeld

Metalcutter said:

Now my question, Did you get Excel to print a form invoice? I mean fill out an invoice form?

If so how big a job is it?

My very best regards to you,


Stanley Dornfeld

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Thanks Stanley

Easy to print a form invoice.. Here is a pic of mine. I shortened it so it would fit on the screen. I use the same basic format for quotes, purchase orders, packing slips.

I create the invoice on Excel, then print it to PDF which is protected from change, then email it to customer.
http://www.newbould.com/PM/spreadPix/invoice.jpg

Here is a screen shot of the sum page of my spreadsheet. Notice on the top is a summation of the itemized info needed on the 1120s tax form (we are a sub s corporation)

http://www.newbould.com/PM/spreadPix/sumsheet.jpg

EVERY transaction is immediately added to this page so that you have an up-to-the-minute picture. There are two checking accounts, nine other categories for credit cards or whatever. Each sheet has the exact number of matching columns so that if desired, you can copy a whole row from one sheet to another and it will match.

The bills sheet contains due dates amounts etc. Plus a summation of net worth.

There are no macros to deal with, no reports necessary to see where you stand. If you want to do a what-if scenario you can put numbers where you want to see what happens, then just quit without saving, or save it with a special different name.

I'll send the complete file with these fictitious numbers in it to whoever would like it.

Interesting..

Please, I would like a copy.

Thank you for the offer.

I will try to PM you my email address.

Best regards,

Stanley Dornfeld

File sent Stanley...

When I figured out how much it cost to "do the payroll" with 6 employees and I also had a couple employees who couldn't budget worth a crap . . . at the end of that year I paid out a month+ bonus on top of payroll and let everyone know that next year we were going to once a month paychecks and would only do direct deposit.

Saved a bunch of hassle . . . and people started learning how to budget. One of my shop guys hated it at first but after a few months figured out that he could budget and I would have to say his life (and work) has improved pretty significantly with a little bit of discipline.

Now with 35+ employees - pay day is celebrated with the company providing Pay Day candy bars and a gourmet assortment of bread, peanut butters, jellys, sodas, milk, fresh fruit, etc. PB&JPD (peanut butter & jelly pay days) are on the 5th of each month for lunch . . .

motion guru said:

Now with 35+ employees - pay day is celebrated with the company providing Pay Day candy bars and a gourmet assortment of bread, peanut butters, jellys, sodas, milk, fresh fruit, etc. PB&JPD (peanut butter & jelly pay days) are on the 5th of each month for lunch . . .

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Yummy... Can I have a job?