A Guide to QuickBooks for Agriculture Businesses

by Team Tradify, July 17, 2023

There’s nothing more important than staying on top of your income and expenses when running a profitable agricultural business. You need to see how well your business is performing, which jobs are most profitable, and where you may be able to claim back expenses.

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QuickBooks is an accounting software trusted by agricultural businesses around the world. Here, we’ll explain the great benefits of QuickBooks and how you can integrate it with job management software, like Tradify, for tracking jobs.

What is accounting or bookkeeping software?
QuickBooks for agriculture businesses
What is job management software?
Benefits of bringing both together
How to integrate QuickBooks & Tradify
Get your accounts in order

1. What is accounting or bookkeeping software?

Accounting software orders your business’s financial data, so you can easily access it for all your accounting and bookkeeping needs. All good systems offer online features for easy access and secure cloud storage.

What features you get depends on different software providers. But the best ones should always be able to help you with at least the following:

Invoicing
Payroll
Bill payments
Accounting
Financial reporting

2. QuickBooks for agriculture businesses – what is it, and how does it work?

The number of agriculture businesses using online accounting software is booming! Who wouldn’t want to drastically diminish their workload of manual admin? Goodbye reconciling expenses, managing every minute detail of the payroll, and writing financial statements.

QuickBooks is a premier accounting software created by Intuit, and specifically designed with small and growing businesses in mind to help them manage their accounts. In America alone, hundreds of thousands of small businesses have trusted QuickBooks to look after their finances.

What’s the best QuickBooks version for an agricultural business?

There are different versions of QuickBooks accounting software. Pick whichever one’s most suitable for your type of agricultural business. For instance, how many people you employ, your job turnover, and work or office locations.

You can choose between:

QuickBooks Online - gives you easy access to job and customer information. It’s designed with simplicity in mind, perfect for anyone who needs to do admin work on the go from a portable device.
QuickBooks Desktop - specifically engineered for office-based use. You’ll get access to a greater range of features to help manage your business accounts.

What are some of QuickBook’s core features?

Accounting – Track cash going in and out of your business accounts, receive statements about your company’s financial health and scan and file receipts to claim back business expenses.
Payments – Show customers your professional flexibility by offering a variety of payment methods, including via credit and debit cards, ACH, and eCheck.
Payroll – Ensures accurate and punctual delivery of staff wages. The software automatically calculates, files, and pays taxes on your behalf. You can manage HR and employee benefits.

Pricing and plan options

QuickBooks offers a range of plans for different-sized budgets. Pick the one which suits your budget best.

With QuickBooks you also get the chance to do a 30-day free trial, letting you test out the software to make an informed decision that it’s the bookkeeping tool your agriculture company needs.

Here’s a brief overview of what each plan offers you:

Simple Start – for agriculture businesses just starting off.

The available features include:

Track income and expenses
Send custom invoices and quotes
Connect to your bank
Track Sales Tax, GST, VAT
Financial insights and reports
Capture and organise receipts
Progress invoicing
For one user, plus your accountant

Essentials – for agricultural professionals wanting to streamline their business.

You can access all the same features as Simple, plus:

Manage bills and payments
Track employee time
Multi-currency
For three users, plus an accountant

Plus – for agricultural professionals who want to expand their businesses.

You can access the same features as Essentials, plus:

Pay recurring transactions and bills
Track inventory
Track project profitability
Manage budgets
For five users, plus an accountant

3. What is job management software?

Accounting software saves you so much time and money, but it only covers half your manual admin. The perfect supplement, to cover all your agriculture admin needs, is Tradify’s job management software. It’s already trusted by thousands of trade professionals to help automate their crucial business tasks and ensure their operations run smoothly and easily.

Here’s a snapshot of what Tradify can do for you:

Schedule and manage jobs from the palm of your hand wherever you are.
Use customisable templates and upload price and material lists.
Send estimates, quotes and invoices from anywhere, helping you get paid faster.
Arrange appointments with agricultural professionals through our connections feature.
Easily stay on top of enquiries so you never miss a lead. Tradify can automatically turn them into quotes for you.
Connect Tradify with Google Calendar to see who’s closest to a job for faster uptake.

4. Benefits of bringing both systems together

Choosing the right digital tools for your business is just as vital as deciding on the right equipment for any job. The last thing you want is a confusing jumble of software and apps that seem to speak another language. You want to make running your agriculture business simpler, not harder.

Tradify syncs with all the best accounting software providers, just like QuickBooks. That means you can use whichever app is most appropriate for the task in front of you, and the data you submit will automatically be shared with the other app as long as you’ve got internet.

There’s a host of reasons why agricultural professionals choose Tradify and QuickBooks synced together to run their business:

One source of truth - Information is shared between Tradify and QuickBooks, so you’ll never have to enter the same information into more than one system. That means less confusion and more time to concentrate on the job at hand.

For instance, a land agent asks you to manage some fields. You create an estimate in Tradify, and all that financial information also syncs to your QuickBooks account. QuickBooks will now be able to use that information to automatically draft financial reports and more for you.

Work faster, not harder - Running an agriculture business means you’re always busy, you don’t have the spare hours to double-handle data every day. Luckily, QuickBooks and Tradify’s integrated system reduces, and for some tasks completely eliminates, manual data entry thanks to automation. That estimate you created? Automatically get it turned into an invoice so that customers can pay you promptly.

Take control of your finances - Time is better spent on agricultural tasks than on trying to fill in blanks with your accountant. With QuickBooks, you and your accountant get instant access to all the same data. That means you’re both always on the same page and you can both crack on with your respective jobs, file your taxes on time, and analyse the data to make informed business decisions.

5. How to integrate QuickBooks and Tradify

Connecting Tradify with QuickBooks is simple.

Head to Settings, choose ‘Integrations’, and then ‘QuickBooks’.
Select ‘Log in to QuickBooks’. Now you’ll be redirected to QuickBooks to log in and authorise Tradify.
Enter your QuickBooks login details and click ‘Sign in’.
Select ‘Authorise’ to allow data sharing between Tradify and QuickBooks.
Next, you’ll be redirected to Tradify and four new account fields.
Select the appropriate account codes for labour, materials, your bank account, and purchases using the fields provided
Click OK.

6. Get your accounts in order

Back in the day, a paper diary, Word, and Excel were agri-professionals' best friends for managing their admin and accounts. But those days are long behind us now! With QuickBooks accounting software it’s never been so quick and easy to keep on top of your bookkeeping. Who wouldn’t want to make managing their agriculture business accounts more efficient and less stressful?

Want to see how easy running your business could be with an integrated job management system? No credit card required. No contracts. Sign up for a 14-day free trial with Tradify.

Or visit one of our live demo webinars to see Tradify in action.

This article is not intended to be financial advice. Please discuss your individual financial situation with your registered financial advisor, bookkeeper, or accountant.