What records does a landscaping business need to give a CPA at tax time?

A CPA preparing a landscaping business tax return typically needs four data sets: total income for the year broken down by source and client, all expenses categorized by type (Fuel, Materials, Equipment, Vehicle, etc), all employee payments by person, and a monthly summary table showing income, expenses, and labor by month. FieldPlexus's CPA Export delivers all four in a single action as either a CSV ZIP file or a formatted PDF report.

How does a landscaper export their accounting records for a CPA?

In FieldPlexus, the CPA Export is at Accounting > Reports > Export Reports. The landscaper selects a date range (typically January 1 through December 31 of the prior tax year) and chooses between CSV ZIP format (four separate spreadsheets for income, expenses, employee payments, and monthly summary) or PDF format (a formatted report with cover page and category breakdowns). Both contain the same data.

Does a landscaper need to issue 1099s to crew members paid in cash or Venmo?

Any contractor paid $600 or more in a year requires a 1099, regardless of payment method. The employee_payments.csv from a CPA Export shows per-person totals once sorted by employee name, making 1099 determination immediate. For W-2 employees, these totals reconcile against payroll records. Without dedicated employee payment tracking, cash and Venmo payments often go undocumented and contractors miss 1099s they should receive.

Can a CPA export be generated mid-year for quarterly estimated taxes?

Yes. The CPA Export accepts any date range, not just full tax years. A landscaper preparing for a Q2 estimated tax payment can pull January through March numbers in about 30 seconds. The same export workflow runs regardless of date range, returning income, expenses, employee payments, and monthly summary scoped to the period selected.

Should a landscaping business send a CPA the CSV format or the PDF format?

Most CPAs prefer the CSV ZIP format because they can sort, filter, pivot, and reconcile against bank statements in a spreadsheet. CPAs who work from printed records or email PDFs to clients for review prefer the PDF format because it reads like a professional accounting report. Some landscapers send both. Both formats contain identical underlying data, so the choice is purely workflow preference.

What Does a Landscaping Business Hand to Their CPA at Tax Time?

Q: What is in a landscaping CPA export's monthly summary?

The monthly summary contains 12 rows, one per month, with columns for total income, total expenses, total employee payments, and net profit (income minus expenses minus payments). This view makes seasonal patterns visible - a typical landscaping business shows revenue ramping in March, peaking June through September, and declining through December. CPAs use the monthly view to spot inconsistencies or months with unexpected spikes worth investigating before filing.

A landscaping business should hand its CPA one consolidated export covering four things: total income for the tax year, all expenses categorized by type, all employee payments by person, and a monthly summary table. FieldPlexus generates this as either a CSV ZIP file with four separate spreadsheets or a formatted PDF report - both ready to email in two taps. The CPA gets organized records instead of a shoebox of receipts and a guess about what got spent.

This is the difference between tax prep taking a multi-day shoebox excavation and tax prep taking 10 minutes. For most landscapers, it's also the difference between paying for legitimate deductions and missing them entirely because the documentation was incomplete.

What CPAs Actually Need from a Landscaping Business

Most CPAs working with small service businesses ask for the same four data sets:

Total income - every dollar that came into the business during the tax year, broken down by source (invoices, cash jobs, manual income entries) and by client where possible. This becomes the gross revenue line on the tax return.

Expense detail by category - every dollar spent, organized by category (Fuel & Gas, Materials & Supplies, Equipment & Repairs, Vehicle, Insurance, Software, Phone, Dump Fees). Categories matter for deduction classification - vehicle expenses follow different rules than supplies, and some categories require documentation the others don't.

Employee payments by person - every dollar paid to crew members, organized by employee name. This data feeds into 1099 generation for contractors paid over $600 in the year, and into payroll calculations for W-2 employees.

Monthly summary - month-by-month totals across income, expenses, and labor. This is what the CPA uses to spot inconsistencies, identify estimated tax payment timing, and catch errors before they hit the return.

FieldPlexus's CPA Export delivers all four in a single action.

Where the Export Lives

The CPA Export is in the Accounting module at Reports > Export Reports. The page asks two questions: what date range and what format.

For tax season, the date range is typically January 1 through December 31 of the prior year. The export pulls every transaction within that window - income, expenses, and employee payments - and packages them into the chosen format.

The Two Format Options

CSV ZIP file downloads as a single ZIP containing four CSV files: income.csv, expenses.csv, employee_payments.csv, and monthly_summary.csv. Each file has clean column headers, sortable data, and one row per transaction. CPAs who use spreadsheets prefer this format because they can filter, pivot, and reconcile against bank statements directly.

PDF report generates a formatted document with the landscaping business's name on the cover page, a table of contents, the monthly summary at the top, and detailed transaction listings broken out by category in the back. CPAs who work from printed records or email PDFs to clients for review prefer this format. The PDF reads like a professional accounting report rather than raw data.

Both formats contain the same underlying data. The choice depends entirely on how the CPA prefers to work. Some landscapers send both.

What's in the Income CSV

The income.csv file has one row per income event. Columns include: date, source (invoice or manual entry), reference (invoice number or description), client name, amount, payment method, and notes.

Invoice payments and manual income entries both appear in this file. For most landscaping businesses, invoice payments make up 95% of rows and manual income (cash jobs, tips, side work) makes up the rest. The total at the bottom matches the gross revenue number that lands on the tax return.

Per-client subtotals can be calculated by sorting the file by client name and summing the amounts. Most CPAs do this automatically as part of their review.

What's in the Expenses CSV

The expenses.csv file has one row per expense. Columns include: date, category, vendor, payment method, amount, and description.

Categories follow FieldPlexus's default category set unless the landscaper customized them: Fuel & Gas, Materials & Supplies, Dump Fees, Equipment & Repairs, Vehicle, Insurance, Software, Phone, and any custom categories the business added.

Sorted by category, this file gives the CPA the deduction view immediately. Sorted by date, it gives the chronological view. Sorted by vendor, it gives the spending-pattern view. The same data answers all three questions without re-running anything.

What's in the Employee Payments CSV

The employee_payments.csv file has one row per payment to a crew member. Columns include: date, employee name, amount, payment method (Cash, Venmo, CashApp, Zelle, check, direct deposit), and notes.

For tax season, the per-employee total is what matters. Any contractor paid over $600 in the year requires a 1099. The CPA can calculate per-person totals by sorting and summing this file in seconds. For W-2 employees, these totals reconcile against payroll records.

For landscapers who pay primarily in cash and Venmo (which is most small landscaping crews), this file is often the only source of truth for crew payments - bank statements don't show it, payroll software isn't being used, and without dedicated employee payment tracking, this data effectively doesn't exist.

What's in the Monthly Summary CSV

The monthly_summary.csv has 12 rows, one per month, with columns for total income, total expenses, total employee payments, and net profit (income minus expenses minus payments).

This is the file that makes seasonal patterns visible. A typical landscaping business shows revenue ramping in March, peaking June through September, and declining through December. Expenses follow a similar pattern but lag slightly. The monthly view spots months where revenue dropped without explanation, or months where expenses spiked unexpectedly - both worth investigating before filing.

The PDF Format Specifics

The PDF version starts with a cover page showing the business name, the date range covered, and the date the report was generated. The next page is the monthly summary table - the same data as the CSV but formatted as a clean table.

The body of the PDF is broken into four sections: Income (chronological list of all income events), Expenses by Category (each category gets its own subsection with the transactions inside), Employee Payments by Person (each crew member gets a section with their payment history), and Annual Totals (a single-page summary).

The PDF is designed to be email-able and CPA-readable without any further processing. Many CPAs print it, mark it up, and use it as the working document for the entire return.

Generating the Export Mid-Year

The CPA Export isn't only for year-end. It works for any date range, which is useful for quarterly estimated tax calculations, mid-year reviews with the CPA, or pulling Q1 numbers in April for an estimated payment.

The same workflow runs: set the date range, pick the format, tap Export. The data scopes to whatever range was selected. A landscaper preparing for a Q2 estimated tax payment can pull January through March numbers in 30 seconds.

Why This Beats the Shoebox

The traditional landscaping business approach to tax prep is: keep receipts in a shoebox throughout the year, dump them on the CPA in February, pay extra for the time spent organizing them, and probably miss some deductions because half the receipts faded or got lost.

The CPA Export is the alternative. The data is captured in real time as the landscaper works (expenses logged from the truck, employee payments logged when paid, income flowing automatically from paid invoices). The export pulls all of it into a clean, organized format the CPA can work with immediately.

For most landscapers, this changes tax season from a multi-day stress event into a 10-minute task. The CPA gets better data. The landscaper gets accurate deductions. The total billable hours from the CPA usually drops because the prep work is already done.

If tax season is the time of year when a landscaping business loses days reconstructing what happened, FieldPlexus generates a complete CPA-ready export covering income, expenses, employee payments, and a monthly summary - in CSV or PDF, in two taps - and a 14-day free trial covers the full accounting workflow.