partenership? laptop or no laptop

[burninbill]

I was wondering if you guys have any advise on how to split up the books in a partenership besides using a laptop. We are not against the laptop but I know how it was last year with certain things that sounded like great ideas but when it came down to it the were a little harder to use in the field than we thought. A laptop sounds great but 1800 dollars is a lot to spend on a peice of equipment that we are not sure will help.
As far as saving data to a disk and splitting up the work we are afraid of making double entries, and other errors that could effect our books.
Any advise would be very helpful.
Thanks
Jon Walker
Cutting Edge Lawn and Landscape




:blob3:

[devildog]

Your right, partnerships are tough enough without this sort of problem, rethink.......long.........and..........hard. With Regards, devildog

[KirbysLawn]

Forget the laptop...my advise would be no partner!

[Tidycut]

Partnerships are great, as long as one of you is the BOSS. In my case I report directly to my boss (my wife) who handles all the paper work, taxes and all business decisions. At first I was a little miffed when she said WE were going into business and that I would be mowing lawns and that she would be driving the shinning new truck and making all the decisions. Her exact words "See da grass, you mow da grass." Live and learn I guess. O' well, we have a "HAPPY RELATIONSHIP." At least that's what she tells me to say anyway.

(I don't know why I wrote that)

Jon, here is my real advice about laptops, though. Ask yourself if this is a necessity or a convenience. If data entry and record keeping consume a lot of time on the road, day in and day out, like estimates, scheduling and reports of some type, I'd say it might be worth it. If not, then it's a nice cool toy and you'll probably get some benefit out of it, but do you really need it. Using a laptop in the field isn't as productive as one might imagine IMO. They have small keyboards, a hard to use mouse pad or button (maybe it's me), sun glare on the screen, and host of other inconveniences.

Why then, spend 1800 on a laptop? Why not buy a used one for 500 and see if it's a benefit. There is hardly any business software that would require a high-end computer or big processing power to do the tasks that most of us do in this biz. For 1800 you can buy a kick a** desktop machine, digital camera, digital voice recorder w/ dictation software, and some advertising. Consider a PDA also. Or a $7.00 lunch five days a week for the whole year. It's only a matter of how you what to spend the money.

And here is a site for computer equipment shopping that might help.

http://www.pricewatch.com/

As far as the double entries go, I'd suggest that one person be responsible for data upkeep. For instance you do the bookkeeping and have the partner do all the equipment maintenance, or whatever. However both of you should know and understand the others job.

I'm sure you'll make the right decision for you.

Rick