Finance
All the accounting a service business runs on
A real general ledger, built from the work itself. Every invoice, payment, supplier bill, check, week of wages and commission lands in one set of books — on the department, the zone and the job it belongs to. Nobody types it in twice.
And all of it goes out. If your accountant lives in QuickBooks, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Sage Intacct or Acumatica, the books go to them as CSV, TSV or Excel — a test file first, and nothing sent twice. Payroll goes to ADP the same way.
- A general ledger with department and zone on every line — profit and loss, balance sheet and budgets.
- Receivables and payables aging, held against the books to the cent.
- Payables from the purchase order to the check.
- Payroll from the job clock, overtime past 40 by law, and a file for ADP.
- Commission for whoever found, quoted and did the work.
- Sales tax for each authority where the work was done.
- Exports shaped for four accounting systems by name, and a full file for any other.
Take it whole, or take the parts you need. Tax withholding and filing stay with your payroll provider.
On this page
- A real general ledger
- Who owes you, and whom you owe
- From purchase order to check
- Payroll from the job clock
- Commission, earned from baselines
- Sales tax where the work was done
- Licences and registrations
- Approved, reviewed, exported once
- Export everything, to whatever keeps your books
- Ask your books anything
A real general ledger
Small, honest, and built from the work. Invoices, payments, supplier bills, checks and wages post themselves. Every line carries its department and zone, so the profit and loss splits by either one — and the month sits beside its budget.
September against its budget, beside a balance sheet that balances.
A zone is a profit center, so it gets its own column. Split the same month by zone or by department and see which one actually made the money.
The same month, a column for every zone.
Click any number and see every line behind it: the entry, the department, the zone and the job it came from.
Every line behind labor revenue, and the job each one came from.
Budgets against actuals
Give an account a budget for a month — company-wide, or for one zone or department — and the profit and loss carries it beside what actually happened.
The P&L is a scorecard
Revenue, gross margin and net income for each zone and department are measured straight from the books and judged against the targets you set — below, on or over, like every other baseline.
Who owes you, and whom you owe
Pick any day. Every open invoice and every approved bill not yet paid lands in the bucket of how late it is — current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, over 90 — by customer or by supplier, or one line per document. By zone or department too.
And it is held against the books. Beside every aging sits the ledger’s own balance for the same day. When the two agree, it says so. When they do not, it says exactly why, item by item, to the cent.
Who owes, and how late — 2,622.01 in the aging, 2,622.01 in the books.
Whom we owe. A draft bill is not a debt until somebody approves it.
Every finance report, one page
Profit and loss, balance sheet, budget against actual, trial balance, the journal, both agings, the pay run, the payroll register, the commission statement, sales tax by authority and the export history — each one says what it answers and opens the screen that holds it.
The same screens work on a phone, so the owner can check who is late from the truck.
The receivables aging, on a phone.
From purchase order to check
You pay for what actually arrived. Every purchase order line marked received becomes a line on that supplier’s bill — two partial deliveries on one PO make one bill with two lines, and a part bought for a job is that job’s cost.
- Raise the PO at the trade counter on a phone, or at the desk.
- Receive it in the warehouse — or on site, straight onto the technician’s truck, from their own visit.
- The bill drafts from what was received — one press, a line for every line received.
- Approve it once the supplier’s own invoice is in hand, by somebody you trust with approval.
- The pay run shows everything due, by supplier, with every bill, invoice and PO number in view.
- Cut the check — in full or in part. A check number is never used twice.
Three bills to one supplier — one paid in part — on one check.
And everything else
A van inspection, shop supplies, the software subscription — a general bill, charged to the account you choose, paid on the same run.
Nothing is owed until it is approved
A draft bill is not a debt. It joins the payables aging, and then the books, once somebody approves it.
Payroll from the job clock
Your technicians already tap the job clock — on the way, arrived, working, done. That is the timesheet.
Paid time runs from when they start traveling to when the work ends. Overlapping visits count once. Anything past 40 hours in a workweek is overtime, because that is the law.
Nobody types hours a second time, and nobody chases a timesheet on Friday.
The paycard is theirs
Every technician has a paycard on their own phone: what they have earned this week so far, and every past week exactly as it was paid — with the visits behind every hour.
Each person sees their own pay and nobody else’s. It is their proof, not your report.
A past week, exactly as it was paid, with the visit behind it.
Close the week, and it stays closed
Closing a week freezes it. What was paid stays what was paid. The wages post to the books against each job’s department and zone.
A closed week: rates, regular and overtime hours, and gross, for everyone in payroll.
A week fixed after it closed is paid on the next check
A visit nobody ended. A clock corrected after payroll ran. The next close finds every correction to every earlier week and pays the difference at the rates of the week it belongs to — with overtime worked out inside that week, the way the law counts it. Time taken off is recovered the same way.
Six corrections to earlier weeks — 590.14 — on this week’s check.
Each correction names the week it corrects, at that week’s rate.
The register is the file for ADP — or whoever runs your payroll: names, home county, rates, regular and overtime hours and pay, commission and gross, salaried people too. Corrections come in their own columns, so they are handled apart from this week’s time.
Commission, earned from baselines
Three people can earn on one job: the technician who found it, the estimator who quoted it, and the technicians who did it, split evenly.
Plans sit on the same ladder as your baselines — the company, a zone, a department, a crew, then the person — and the closest one wins. Labor and parts carry their own percentages. When a technician found the work, the estimator can earn at a lesser rate.
It is earned when the invoice is paid in full — or when it posts, if your plan says so. If a payment bounces, the plan decides: take it back, hold it, or let it stand.
And it lands on the paycheck. The technician sees it on their paycard, invoice by invoice — you found it, you quoted it, you did the work. Somebody outside payroll is paid on a bill instead.
This week so far, and the commission on this check.
Who earned what, on which paid invoice, and the plan that set the rate.
Sales tax where the work was done
The rate comes from the service site — never the billing address. A site sits in its state, county, city and transit district, and each authority is its own line on the invoice.
What is taxed comes from the customer. Commercial or residential decides whether labor is taxed, and an exemption and its certificate belong to the customer who pays — not to the building.
At filing time: what was collected for each authority, under the code it is filed under, with a file for the return. A permit fee is a line on the job, never folded into the tax.
State, city and transit, each with the code it is filed under.
Licences and registrations
A contractor licence for every state you work in, trade certifications and who holds them, business licences, DOT and motor-carrier numbers, sales tax permits, bonds and insurance — each with its number exactly as issued, its class, where it is valid and when it expires.
You choose which ones print on your paperwork. The contractor licence goes on every quote and invoice; the bond stays on file for bidding. A technician’s own trade licence is kept on their record, with its expiry.
The company’s registrations, and which ones print on the letterhead.
Approved, reviewed, exported once
Every money document — invoice, payment, bill, check and pay week — is approved, then reviewed by a named person, then exported in a batch. Approval belongs to the people you give it to.
Who reviewed each bill, when, and the batch it left in — still in the books.
Exporting takes a document out of the work area. It never takes it out of the books — and once it is exported it is corrected only by voiding it, so what you have and what your accountant has cannot drift apart.
Export everything, to whatever keeps your books
Run the business here, and keep your accountant where they are. The books go out whole — every journal entry and line, with its account, department, zone, job and customer or supplier — as CSV, TSV or Excel, all three written from the same cells so they never disagree.
| Your accounting system | What goes | Department goes in | Zone goes in |
|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Online | Invoices, payments, bills and checks — or the general journal | Class | Location |
| Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central | The general journal | Shortcut dimension 1 | Shortcut dimension 2 |
| Sage Intacct | The general journal | Department | Location |
| Acumatica | The general journal | Subaccount | Branch |
| Anything else | The general journal, every column | Department | Zone |
| ADP, for payroll | The payroll register — hours, rates, gross and corrections | — | — |
Each file is shaped from that system’s own published import template. Run the test file through your import before the first real one.
A test file before anything is committed
Build exactly the file an export would send, and change nothing. Import it, check it, then export for real.
A test file for Sage Intacct: 69 entries, and the debits equal the credits. Nothing was sent.
Six lines of that file — one invoice, its revenue, and three tax authorities on their own lines, each carrying its zone and department:
JOURNAL,DATE,DESCRIPTION,REFERENCE_NO,LINE_NO,ACCT_NO,LOCATION_ID,DEPT_ID,DOCUMENT,MEMO,DEBIT,CREDIT GJ,09/27/2026,Invoice 0000000017,00000020,1,4100,AUSTIN,SERVICE,0000000017,Revenue,,100.00 GJ,09/27/2026,Invoice 0000000017,00000020,2,4500,AUSTIN,SERVICE,0000000017,Revenue,,200.00 GJ,09/27/2026,Invoice 0000000017,00000020,3,2100,AUSTIN,SERVICE,0000000017,Tax - State of Texas,,6.25 GJ,09/27/2026,Invoice 0000000017,00000020,4,2100,AUSTIN,SERVICE,0000000017,Tax - City of Austin 2227016,,1.00 GJ,09/27/2026,Invoice 0000000017,00000020,5,2100,AUSTIN,SERVICE,0000000017,Tax - Austin MTA 3227999,,1.00 GJ,09/27/2026,Invoice 0000000017,00000020,6,1100,AUSTIN,SERVICE,0000000017,Accounts receivable,308.25,
Nothing goes twice
An export takes only the entries that system has not had. Send September again and nothing goes. An entry posted late into September goes with the next export, not never.
And if your invoices already went across as documents, it tells you before the same money is booked twice.
The same file, again
A batch that left can be downloaded again at any time, in any of the three formats — rebuilt from what it carried, so it is the file that went.
QuickBooks, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Sage Intacct, Acumatica and ADP are trademarks of their respective owners. ServiceProof exports files for them to import; it is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any of them.
Ask your books anything
Everything on this page is also a question you can ask. “How did Austin do against budget last month?” “Who owes us more than thirty days?” “What do we owe Ferguson, and on which POs?” Your agent reads the same books you do, with the permissions you gave it.
Or just start it. Closing a pay week, paying a supplier, reviewing what goes to the accountant — every money job starts from one page, in a sentence.
Every money job, one page: stock, buying and paying, billing, and the books.