Bookkeeping
Most landscaping businesses run their books somewhere else - a shoebox, a spreadsheet, or a bookkeeper who sees the year in March. LawnLedger can do the whole thing, so the invoice you sent and the payment that cleared and the fuel you bought are all one story.
You can use as much or as little of this as you want. Connecting a bank account and categorizing transactions is useful on its own. The full double-entry ledger is there when you’re ready for it.
Bank feeds, reconciliation and reading the books - the chart of accounts and
the statements - are Growth and up (bankFeeds, glStatements). The
rest of the accounting layer - journal entries, closing the books, and vendor
bills - is Growth and up too: it runs on the native ledger
(nativeLedger), which is included in Growth. Job costing and budgets are Professional and up.
Where to start
Connect your bank
Link an account through Plaid so transactions arrive on their own instead of being typed in. This is the step that makes everything else less work.
Transactions and categorization
What to do with the transactions once they land: categorize them, split them, match them to invoices and expenses, and teach LawnLedger to do it for you next time.
Reconciliation
Prove that what LawnLedger thinks you have matches what the bank says you have, one statement at a time.
Money going out
Expenses
Fuel, materials, subcontractors, equipment repairs - what you spent, what job it belonged to, and the receipt to prove it.
Bills
What you owe vendors and when it’s due. Different from an expense: a bill is a promise to pay later, and it sits on your books until you do.
Payables
Vendors, purchase orders, approvals and pay runs - the whole money-out flow. Paying vendors by ACH bank transfer is coming soon.
Job costing
What a job actually cost you once labor, materials, and equipment are counted - and whether the price you charged was right.
The books themselves
Chart of accounts
The list of buckets everything gets sorted into. LawnLedger ships a sensible one for landscaping; you can add to it.
The general ledger
The record underneath every report: account registers with running balances, and a link from any entry back to the document that posted it.
Journal entries
Browse everything that posted, and write the entries no document covers - depreciation, an owner draw, a reclassification.
Accounting basis
Cash or accrual: when a dollar counts, which reports follow the setting, and what changes if you switch.
Tips
Business income, other income, or held for the crew: where a customer’s tip lands, from a date you pick, and how to pay it out.
Budgets
Plan each account by month for the fiscal year, and read the plan beside your profit and loss.
Fixed assets
Trucks, mowers and trailers on the books: the cost, a depreciation schedule the books post for you, and the sale or scrap at the end.
Loans
Truck notes and equipment loans: what you owe, a payment schedule the books post for you on the due day, and the interest on the profit and loss.
Classes and locations
What kind of work it was, and where: tag the documents, then read a profit and loss per class or per location, or filter it to one.
Closing the books
Opening balances, locking a month, and closing a year into retained earnings.
QuickBooks sync
If your accountant lives in QuickBooks, keep the two in step - customers, invoices, payments, and items.
LawnLedger’s own books and the QuickBooks sync are mutually exclusive by design. Running both would give you two sets of numbers that disagree, and no way to tell which is right. Pick the one your accountant works in.