The ticket is written at the job. The books have to catch it.
Mobile mechanics, mobile diesel and equipment repair, and on-site service crews run a whole business out of the truck. The ticket gets written on the tailgate and paid by card or cash. Before the month closes, it has to become an invoice, a deposit, and a sales tax answer. That handoff is the work.
One path for every ticket.
01 · The Ticket
Customer, location, what the unit was, and parts and labor on separate lines. Separating them is what lets the tax be right.
02 · The Invoice
Item codes carry the tax treatment, so the invoice taxes the work correctly without the tech deciding it at the job.
03 · The Deposit
Card reader, cash, check, or ACH, each tied to the invoice it pays. Cash is counted and deposited intact, so every cash sale ties to the bank.
04 · The Close
Every account reconciled to its bank statement each month, and the sales tax you collected reconciled to the return you file.
The answer changes with what you worked on.
Parts are generally taxable unless the buyer gives you a resale or exemption certificate. Labor depends on the unit: labor to repair a motor vehicle is generally not taxable, while labor to repair off-road equipment, generators, compressors, and other machinery generally is. The same truck can write both kinds of ticket in the same week.
Getting it wrong costs money in both directions. Under-collect, and the tax comes out of your margin. Over-collect, and the tax you collected is still owed to the state. We set up item and tax codes by type of unit and review them when the work changes.
Kept the way an auditor asks for them.
Tickets and Invoices
Filed by month, with the ticket and the invoice it became kept together.
Cash and Deposits
A count for each day that took cash, and the deposit slip that matches it.
Resale and Exemption Certificates
Filed by customer, checked when a new customer is set up, and matched to how their tickets are coded.
Statements, Returns, and Reconciliations
Every bank statement, all pages, and each sales tax return with the reconciliation behind it. Texas sales tax audits generally reach back four years, so the system keeps at least that.
Setting up the first month? Build My Document List.
Monthly books with parts and labor separated, payroll for your techs from the same books, and margin by truck and job type for pricing decisions.
Mobile repair questions.
Our techs write tickets on paper. Is that a problem?
Not if the paper makes it to the books. Photos through the secure file exchange work, and so does a ticketing app. Either way the ticket needs the same things: parts and labor on separate lines, what the unit was, and where the work happened.
A lot of our customers pay cash. What changes?
Deposit it intact and log it by ticket, so every cash sale has an invoice and a deposit behind it. Cash that never reaches the bank is hard to rebuild later, and it is the part of the records an audit leans on hardest.
A customer gave us an exemption certificate. What do we do with it?
Keep it on file with that customer and code their tickets to match. If you cannot produce it in an audit, the sale can be treated as taxable.
Do you also handle payroll and the owner's return?
Yes. The same firm keeps the books, runs payroll for bookkeeping clients, and prepares the returns, so the tax positions start from books that already tie.