Boomerang runs a field-services contractor on one set of records, from the field to the closed books. A job is entered once and carries its crews, hours, equipment, purchase orders and invoices with it, so the crew's hours become the paycheck and the journal entry without anyone typing them twice. QuickBooks Desktop, the payroll subscription and the spreadsheet between them go away.
Why Boomerang
Most contractors run a field app and an accounting package, and carry numbers from one to the other. Boomerang does both jobs in one place.
The job on the timesheet is the job on the purchase order, the vendor bill and the customer invoice. Each job shows its labor hours and purchases as they happen, and the labor report prices those hours by job. Nothing is typed twice.
How time moves through itEvery entry balances before it is saved. A void writes a reversal in its own period, and a locked period stays locked.
The ledger's guaranteesPay runs build from approved hours at the rate in force on each day, union scale included, then calculate federal and state taxes, print checks and stubs, and produce Form 941 figures.
How a pay run worksSeveral companies behind one login, on your own hardware or a hosted US instance, with the encryption key for payroll and bank details in your hands.
Companies, roles and hostingTimesheets and approvals
Each employee has a weekly timesheet. A foreman or project manager can enter the whole crew's day on their jobs. Every entry carries the job, the equipment and the materials used, so labor cost lands on the job and nobody enters the hours a second time for payroll.
The first approval comes from the manager of each job on the sheet. Further levels come from each employee's approval level. If an entry changes after approval, only the first level has to approve it again.
A manager can flag a whole sheet or a single entry, and Boomerang records who flagged it, who cleared it and when. Once a posted paycheck has paid an entry, its hours, date and job are locked until that paycheck is voided.
Timesheets › Week of Oct 5Equipment trackers
A Boomerang tracker is a small Bluetooth tag you fix to a machine. Every crew phone running the Boomerang app notices the trackers it passes and reports where it saw them, so each machine's record shows where it was last seen, when, and by whom.
Equipment › Plate compactor 07 › LocationA tracker is a Bluetooth tag on a coin cell in a sealed case. There is no cell plan to buy for each machine.
A warning shows when a machine was last heard more than a mile from the job it is assigned to. You set the distance.
The mobile app lists the tracked equipment around you and shows the signal getting stronger as you walk toward a machine.
Location sits beside the inspections, maintenance, hours and fuel already kept for that machine, with a history of where it has been seen.
The trackers are in prototype today. The tracking they report to is already part of the web and mobile apps.
Union setup › Local 760 › Rates| Qualification | Wage | Fringes | Total hourly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foreman | 44.20 | 18.65 | 62.85 |
| Journeyman | 41.20 | 18.65 | 59.85 |
| Apprentice, 3rd period | 28.84 | 18.65 | 47.49 |
Pay rates and union scale
Pay rates are kept by effective date. A raise applies from its date and does not change pay for earlier days. Union scale is kept the same way, per local and per qualification. Payroll looks up each hour by its date and its job. That covers a mid-year raise, a new contract, or a week on a job in another local, without anyone editing the timesheet.
Payroll
A pay run starts from the timesheets your managers have already approved. Payroll is part of Boomerang, with no separate subscription to buy.
Payroll › Pay run Oct 3–9 › PaycheckAccounting › Journal entries › JE-10482| Account | Job | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000Accounts Payable | 2041 | 4,860.00 | |
| 2000Accounts Payable | 2056 | 1,215.50 | |
| 1010Operating Checking | 6,075.50 | ||
| Totals | 6,075.50 | 6,075.50 | |
The ledger
Invoices, payments, bills, checks, deposits, transfers and paychecks all post the same way, under the same rules. The six rules below are checked each time an entry is saved.
Pay Center shows every open bill, grouped by vendor. You pick the ones to pay and pay them in one step, with one payment per vendor. Vendor payments, bank checks and paychecks print on blank or preprinted check stock.
An entry whose debits do not equal its credits is not saved, and the screen says why.
A void writes a new entry with every line flipped, dated in the original period. The two net to zero.
Set the date the books are locked through. Postings and voids on or before it are refused until it is moved.
A bill, payment or paycheck can reach the books only once. Two people paying the same bill at the same moment are stopped.
A payment, the bills it pays and its journal entry are saved as one. If any part fails, none of it is kept.
Tick what appears on the statement, finish when the cleared balance matches, and the cleared lines cannot be changed.
Built for how a contractor is actually organized
Contractors run more than one entity, and the same people and machines work across them. Boomerang keeps each company's books apart, lets one login reach all of them, and runs wherever you want the data kept.
Each company keeps its own data and settings. An employee can belong to more than one, and switch between them without a second account. Equipment can be charged across the companies it works for.
Permissions are granted per role, per company. Approval levels for POs and timesheets are set per employee, so the approval chain follows your own org chart.
Run Boomerang on your own hardware, or let us host it in the United States. Either way, you decide where the data lives.
Social Security numbers and bank details are encrypted with a key that belongs to your installation alone.
Reports and the dashboard
Every report is saved with its filters, columns, sort and grouping. Schedule it daily on chosen weekdays, weekly or monthly, and Boomerang emails it to the people who need it. Pin it to your dashboard instead if you would rather look than read mail.
The dashboard shows each person their direct reports, their job tasks, holidays and upcoming time off, the POs and timesheets waiting for their approval, and anything flagged on their jobs. The whiteboard shows each day's jobs with the people and equipment on them, and you drag to reassign.
Coming from QuickBooks Desktop?
Boomerang's accounting was built to take over from QuickBooks Desktop at a working contractor, with the full history imported rather than restarted. Every weekly task your office does in QuickBooks has a home here, in the same system the crews already use for time.
| Your task | In QuickBooks Desktop | In Boomerang |
|---|---|---|
| Enter and pay bills | Enter Bills, Pay Bills, print checks | Bills built from approved purchase orders. Pay Center pays a selection by vendor in one step and prints the checks. |
| Invoice customers and take payments | Create Invoices, Receive Payments, credit memos | Invoices drafted from the job, emailed as PDF with your template. Payments applied across open invoices. Credit memos. |
| Reconcile the bank | Reconcile | Statement reconciliation per account with undo, history and a cleared/outstanding report. QuickBooks' cleared status comes across in the import. |
| Run payroll | Paychecks via an Intuit payroll subscription | Pay runs built from approved timesheets, tax calculation, deductions, printed checks, pay stubs, payroll register and Form 941 figures. No subscription. |
| Close the month | Set a closing date and password | Lock the books through a date. Postings and voids before it are refused. A void lands in the original period, as it does in QuickBooks. |
| Read the statements | P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, trial balance, GL | The same statements, filterable by cost center, plus budget vs actual, AR and AP aging and 1099 totals. |
| Track classes and jobs | Classes, Customer:Job | Cost centers on every ledger line act as classes. Jobs carry labor, equipment and purchase-order cost from the operations side. |
| Know who changed what | Audit trail, user roles | Version history on every record, a dated entry naming who approved, flagged or voided it, and permissions granted per role, per company. |
The path off QuickBooks
Your existing books are imported with their history. You then run one month-end in both systems and check them against the same bank statement before you switch.
Accounting › AP aging › Summary| Vendor | Current | 1–30 | 31–60 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hale Aggregates | 6,075.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 6,075.50 |
| North Fork Rentals | 2,340.00 | 1,180.00 | 0.00 | 3,520.00 |
| Voyager Fleet | 4,418.17 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 4,418.17 |
| Summit Pipe & Supply | 0.00 | 0.00 | 812.40 | 812.40 |
| Total | 12,833.67 | 1,180.00 | 812.40 | 14,826.07 |
Chart of accounts, customers, vendors, invoices, bills, payments, credit memos, transfers, journal entries, opening balances and cleared status come in from your QuickBooks export.
Keep QuickBooks for one month-end close while Boomerang runs the same month. Reconcile the two statements line by line.
Open invoices and bills carry across as open. From then on the crews' time, the POs and the books live in one place.
Everything inside
Each area below is part of the same system and shares its records with the rest. None of it is an add-on or a third-party integration.
Customers, locations, project managers and foremen. Custom fields, tags, tasks and line items. Files, photos and messages with @mentions, with full version history on every change.
Weekly sheets with daily entries per job and equipment. Regular, overtime, double-time and drive-time hours. Foreman crew entry, daily and weekly PDFs, multi-level approval, flags and bulk approve.
Categories with their own custom fields. Inspections and maintenance schedules. Hours, mileage and fuel purchases, and job assignments on a drag-and-drop whiteboard. Boomerang trackers, now in prototype, report where each machine was last seen.
Purchase orders with approval rules and levels. Vendors with contracts and expiring documents. POs emailed straight to the vendor, and bills built from POs line by line.
Roles and permissions per company. Qualifications and certifications. Unions with scale wages and fringes per qualification. Time off accrual and requests, and dated pay rates with encrypted sensitive data.
Chart of accounts and journal entries. Invoices, payments and credit memos. Bills, Pay Center and printed checks. Banking, reconciliations, budgets and statements.
Pay runs built from approved timesheets. Federal and state withholding, FICA and deductions. Printed checks and pay stubs with year-to-date, payroll reports and Form 941 figures.
Saved filters, columns, sorting and grouping across jobs, people, equipment, POs, vendors and labor. AR and AP aging, 1099 totals, cash flow and GL. Scheduled and emailed, or pinned to the dashboard.
Search across jobs, people, equipment, vendors and documents, with filters that save as reports. The mobile app works on the same records as the web app. There is an API for anything you want to connect.
Optional modules, switched on per company: livestock, for cattle, farms, weights, medications and sales, and inventory, for products on hand.
Designed, written and supported in the United States, for American contractors.
One US team builds Boomerang and supports it. Development and support are not outsourced.
Federal and state withholding, Social Security and Medicare, Form 941 figures, 1099 totals, US dollars and a US fiscal year.
The hosted version runs in the United States. On your own servers, it is wherever you put it.
See it with your own data
Tell us a little about the company: how many crews, what you run today for time and books, and whether you are coming from QuickBooks Desktop. We will walk through Boomerang with jobs and timesheets that look like yours.
