Bookkeeper / QuickBooks Online Pro for US Landscaping Company (Ongoing, Part-Time)

Budget: ~$300/month ongoing (approx. 6–10 hours/week). Hourly range $12–20/hr, weekly cap 8 hours. Paid trial task first, then monthly retainer for the right person. About us: We're a small landscaping and lawn-maintenance company in the US with about 10 field workers. We do two kinds of work — recurring maintenance accounts and one-off landscaping/install jobs — and we want someone who can take our bookkeeping off our plate and help us get organized. Right now the owner is doing too much of this himself and our records are messier than they should be. What we need you to do (ongoing): - Manage our books in QuickBooks Online — categorize transactions, reconcile bank and credit card accounts monthly - Create and send customer invoices, and follow up on unpaid invoices (receivables) - Track payments to our contractors and prepare 1099-NEC forms at year-end (all our workers are 1099, so there is no W-2 payroll) - Enter vendor bills and keep payables organized - Send the owner a simple monthly report: profit & loss, and revenue split between maintenance vs. landscaping work - Prepare our quarter-end taxes — 1099-NEC/1096 filings, the business income tax return, and sales tax filings if applicable — for the owner to review and file. (The owner signs and files; we need you to prepare everything.) First project (this is your trial — paid): Before we set up the monthly arrangement, we'll start with two cleanup tasks so we can see your work: 1. Clean up our customer list. Right now it's a mess — it mixes real paying customers with people we only gave estimates to and never heard back from. We need actual customers separated from dead estimates and leads. 2. Review and clean up our QuickBooks so it's properly organized, with maintenance and landscaping set up as separate trackable categories (classes or job types). If this goes well, we move to the ongoing monthly role. Down the road: We'd eventually like to understand our profit margins by customer and by service line. We know that requires tracking crew hours and materials per job — if you have experience setting up job costing for landscaping or construction (e.g. in QuickBooks, Jobber, Aspire, or LMN), that's a big plus and we'd love your guidance on it. Requirements: - Strong experience with QuickBooks Online for US small businesses (QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor certification preferred) - Comfortable with US bookkeeping practices and preparing US small-business taxes (income tax return + 1099s) for owner review and signature - Experience with construction, landscaping, trades, or field-service clients is a strong plus - Excellent written English — most of our communication will be by message - Reliable, organized, and able to work independently with light oversight - Able to overlap with US business hours for occasional check-ins (flexible) To apply, please tell us: 1. Your experience with QuickBooks Online and US small businesses 2. Whether you've worked with landscaping/construction/field-service clients before 3. How you'd approach cleaning up a customer list that's full of old estimates and dead leads (a couple sentences — we want to see how you think) 4. Your monthly rate for the ongoing work described above We're looking for a long-term partner, not the cheapest bid. Show us you understand the business and you'll get our attention.