07Oct 2005 by Nancy Smyth

Why is Job Costing so important?

Business Productivity Tips & Training
Job cost tracking is an extremely important part of every contractor's business. Job costing tracks the expenses for a job, and then allows you to compare those expenses to the jobs revenue.  This tells you which jobs are making money and which jobs are not. By using QuickBooks built-in job costing tools you can easily see exactly how much money you are spending on each of your jobs. Job costing within QuickBooks can also help you estimate future jobs more accurately. Estimating id one of the most important – and most difficult – part of running your construction business. And unless you have the ability to compare your actual costs to your estimated costs after the job has been completed, you will have no way of knowing if your estimating…
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16Jun 2005 by Nancy Smyth

Creating Double-Sided Items for Tracking Costs & Revenues

QuickBooks Tips, Techniques & Work Arounds
  QuickBooks uses Items extensively.  Items are used on just about every form in QuickBooks, from Estimates, Invoices, Purchase Orders, bills and checks, and coupled with your Chart of Accounts form the very backbone of your job costing. In Quickbooks Pro. Premier, and Enterprise you can set up items so that a single item can track both Income and Expenses.  This means that you can use the item on Purchase Orders, Bills, or Checks to cost information to an Expense or Cost of Goods Sold Account; and then use the same item on Estimates and  Invoices to send revenue to an Income Account. Request your copy of this article today, by clicking the button below. Note:  While this is a free article, we do request that you enter your email…
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15Jun 2005 by Nancy Smyth

Setting Up a Good QuickBooks Item List

QuickBooks Tips, Techniques & Work Arounds
  We are often asked by both new and veteran QuickBooks users about how to set up a "good" Item List. QuickBooks uses Items extensively.  Items are used on just about every form in QuickBooks, from Estimates, Invoices, Purchase Orders, bills and checks, and coupled with your Chart of Accounts form the very backbone of your job costing. The only way to set up a "good" item list is to create one that is specific to your company's needs, which means planning.  The tips in this article will help you get started. Request your copy of this article today, by clicking the button below. Note:  While this is a free article, we do request that you enter your email address so that we can notify you if this article is…
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16Apr 2003 by Nancy Smyth

Recording Job Deposits in QuickBooks

QuickBooks Tips, Techniques & Work Arounds
  A job deposit is money that belongs to the customer, but the customer has given it to you to hold or to use to purchase materials and labor for their job. In other words, it's money in the bank, but you still need to earn it. You should not record it as income when you get it. The deposit is a liability on your books even though you deposit the funds into your checking account. When you have incurred costs on the project in excess of the deposit, an invoice should be created to bill the customer for work performed to date and the amount of the deposit should get applied to the customer's invoice. That means that the deposit will be subtracted from the amount the customer owes…
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15Oct 2002 by Nancy Smyth

Useful Reports to Create & Memorize in QuickBooks

QuickBooks Tips, Techniques & Work Arounds
  Contractors need a wide variety of reports to run their business, some that even the Premier Contractor or Enterprise Contractor versions of QuickBooks do not provide. These are some useful reports that have been created over the years for various contractors that I have provided bookkeeping services for. Request your copy of this article today, by clicking the button below. Note:  While this is a free article, we do request that you enter your email address so that we can notify you if this article is updated. [purchase_link id="1228" style="button" color="blue" text="Request your copy of Useful Reports to Create & Memorize in QuickBooks now!"]
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15Oct 2002 by Nancy Smyth

Important Facts About Items Left as “Billable” in QuickBooks

QuickBooks Tips, Techniques & Work Arounds
  I’m sure you’ve all gotten used to seeing that funny little Invoice icon on timesheets, the enter bill and write checks window and don’t even pay attention to them anymore. Are you aware though that if you leave that little invoice icon active and don’t “x” it out that the information relating to that transaction line is stored within your QB file in a separate “waiting to be billed” data base just taking up space and therefore making your file larger than normal and causing your file to run slower? It’s true. Leaving the invoice icon active tells QB that you want to pass this cost on to your customer through the Time & Costs section of Invoicing. And unless you do time & materials type billing this is…
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