QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup | QuickBooks for Contractors blog

07Feb 2012 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip: Important Facts About Items Left as Billable

Customers & Accounts Receivable, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

Many QuickBooks forms have a billable column, do you know what it's used for and are you using it correctly? Many QuickBooks forms have a billable column available for you to work with - checks, enter bills, timesheets, enter credit card charges, etc. The purpose of the billable column is to allow you to choose which expenses and/or time entries that you will be passing through to customers when you create an Invoice based on Time & Costs {also know as Time & Materials billings or Cost Plus billing in the construction industry.} Welcome to Tuesday Training! Tuesday Training is a new feature here on the QuickBooks for Contractors blog. While everyday focuses on training of one sort or another, Tuesday’s are dedicated to more in-depth training. We’ll teach you…

31Jan 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Choosing QuickBooks & Add-Ons for Your Construction Business

QuickBooks Add-Ons, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

QuickBooks, while a great software program, is a "generic" accounting program. Even though there is a "Contractor version", it was designed to meet the needs of all types of contractors - from the home handyman to a general contractor. Only through the use of QuickBooks integrated add-ons will you find that it then becomes a viable substitute for the more costly construction specific accounting programs available. Welcome to Tuesday Training! Tuesday Training is a new feature here on the QuickBooks for Contractors blog. While everyday focuses on training of one sort or another, Tuesday’s are dedicated to more in-depth training. We’ll teach you the things you need to know about using QuickBooks, that you won’t find in the QuickBooks Help file, in order to successfully run your construction business and…

23Jan 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Working With Taxable & Non-taxable Items and Customers

Customers & Accounts Receivable, Free & Fee-Based QuickBooks eBooks, Questions from our readers, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup, Webinars & Training

Working with taxable and non-taxable items and customers in QuickBooks sometimes just freaks people out and causes them to over think the entire situation. I'm frequently asked how to do this by people who are setting up our AIA billing program - here's a question that I received recently. I am getting ready to set the AIA billing program {Construction Application for Payment Solution} up tomorrow and just have a few questions. Should the income items each be posted to an income general ledger account? Or will I use the subtotal line to point to an income account? If I have to post each income item to an income account - I will have to do 2 sets of them, one for wholesale (no tax) and one for retail (taxable)…

09Jan 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Creating Estimates In Excel vs. QuickBooks – What’s the Difference?

Customers & Accounts Receivable, Job Costing Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

If you use QuickBooks for your accounting and you create your Estimates in Excel instead of within QuickBooks you loose out on job costing capabilities and so much more! I often see and hear comments such as this as I browse the web or talk with potential customers for our software: Right now we are using QuickBooks Contractor. It is ok for our accounting software but we are looking for something that works as an overall system for our office - CRM, estimating, job costing, proposals, work tickets and most importantly easy for my guys to use. Right now we are using Excel for Estimates and invoices. When I see and hear comments like this I get so confused - because QuickBooks does allow you to create Estimates, Proposals, and…

16Sep 2011 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip – File Size & DB File Fragments What Do They Mean?

Be A Better Bookkeeper, Free & Fee-Based QuickBooks eBooks, General QuickBooks News, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

The size of your QuickBooks file and the number of DB File Fragments determines the health of your QuickBooks company data file. Most people don’t periodically check the health of their QuickBooks file to help prevent data corruption – mainly because they don’t realize that they should or even how to go about it. Monday's blog post - Basic File Maintenance Before & After You Upgrade - talked about checking your current file size and health before before you upgrade to a new version of QuickBooks. In reality, you should periodically check this information just to see how healthy your file is or isn't. To check the size of your own QuickBooks file – with QuickBooks open press the CTRL and the 1 keys at the same time OR press…

08Sep 2011 by Lorien Prince

Entering Job-to-Date Costs & Billing Data at the Item Level

From Our Guest Bloggers, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

A QuickBooks tip for entering Job-to-data costs and billing data at the item level when converting or archiving. Use this procedure to enter Job-to-date (“JTD”) costs and JTD billing so the Job Profitability Detail Report is accurate at the Item level after converting your existing Quickbooks file to a new database file, or after archiving old QuickBooks transactions. In both cases, you are bringing over beginning balances as of the conversion date into your new data file, and this procedure will prove useful for reporting on jobs that are in progress as of the conversion date. From your old data file: Run your Job Profitability Detail Reports for each job in progress to obtain the JTD cost and revenue figures as of the conversion date. In the date fields, leave…

06Sep 2011 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip – How To Rebuild Your QuickBooks Data File

General QuickBooks News, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

This QuickBooks Tip provides instructions for how to rebuild your QuickBooks data file. The rebuild function will help maintain the overall health of your file. Is your QuickBooks file very large? Is it running slow? Are you in a multi-user environment where 2 or more people are inputting a lot of information on a daily basis? If you answered yes to any of these questions you would probably benefit from rebuilding your data file on a regular basis. The QuickBooks Rebuild Data function is like a cleaning lady. When you access the rebuild function it looks at all of the information in your file and makes sure that it has been filed correctly. Think of your desk, covered in piles of papers that need to be filed. Before you actually…

30Jun 2011 by Jo Ellen Peters

QuickBooks Tip – How To Customize Invoices

Customers & Accounts Receivable, From Our Guest Bloggers, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

A QuickBooks tip about how to customize invoices without purchasing pre-printed forms. You use the Create Invoice icon to invoice your customers. The invoices are plain looking, just your company name, no logo, nothing that really makes it stand out and look like a professional invoice. How would you like to customize the invoice without the cost of purchasing invoices? You can by using the customization tool available. While in the invoice, go to the Customize button at the top and click the down arrow, then click on Manage Templates and you will see this screen: Highlight the template you want to customize and click okay at the bottom of the page. The next window that opens will look like this: This window will give you several options on how…

23May 2011 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Creating a More Meaningful Payroll Expenses Section

Payroll Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

QuickBooks, by default, offers a single account called Payroll Expenses in your Chart of Accounts and all of the pre-programmed Payroll Items for wages and taxes are assigned to that one single account. When a business owner runs a Profit & Loss Report, when QuickBooks is set up in this manner, the report doesn't really provide him with any real idea of how much he paid in wages vs. taxes because it’s all just lumped together in a single amount. [caption id="attachment_2183" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Right click on the image to enlarge it"][/caption] I find this to be very frustrating because it means that you have to run additional reports and perform additional calculations in order to determine very basic information. Previously, we covered creating a more functional Payroll Liabilities section…

16May 2011 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip-Creating a Functional Payroll Liabilities Section

Payroll Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

A QuickBooks Payroll Tip for creating a more functional Payroll Liabilities section on your Chart of Accounts. QuickBooks, by default, provides a limited Payroll Chart of Accounts containing only two accounts - Payroll Liabilities and Payroll Expenses. When you run a Balance Sheet or a Profit & Loss Report (or look at your Chart of Accounts listing) you only see the totals with no details and have to run further reports to find the individual amounts that make up the totals. I find this to be problematic. This article will show you how to add sub-accounts to the standard Payroll Liabilities account so that you can quickly and easily "see" the individual amounts for each payroll liability and how to edit your existing payroll items to accurately point to these…

02May 2011 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks for Contractors Tip-Entering Job to Date Costs & Billing Data

Job Costing Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

Contractors switching to QuickBooks from another accounting program are often concerned about how to enter Job to Date Costs and Billing Data when converting, so they don't loose this vital information. Below is a procedure that I found several years ago, unfortunately I don't remember where I found it or who wrote it (otherwise I would be happy to give them credit for it), but I do want to share it with you; as it is one way to handle this task. Use this procedure to enter Job-to-date (“JTD”) costs and JTD billing so the Job Profitability Summary is accurate after converting your existing accounting software to QuickBooks, when you convert your existing QuickBooks file to a new database file, or after archiving old QuickBooks transactions. Run your Job Profitability…

11Apr 2011 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Payroll Tip-Setting Up General Liability Insurance Tracking

Payroll Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

QuickBooks Payroll, when properly set up, is capable of tracking and including the cost of your General Liability Insurance; as well as many of the other things that costly construction software does automatically - with a little more effort on your part and without the big price tag. Tracking General Liability Insurance, when it is based on gross payroll, and getting those costs into Job Costing Reports is vital for many businesses, especially the construction industry. NOTE: The best time to implement this procedure is when your General Liability Insurance Policy period starts. The following instructions will allow you to track your General Liability Insurance costs when it is based on gross payroll and get those costs into your job costing reports without making complex journal entries. It will also…

21Mar 2011 by Nancy Smyth

How to Set Up Timetracking – #QuickBooks Tip

Payroll Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

How to set up timetracking and use QuickBooks timesheets is a question that I see nearly every day on the Intuit Community forums. There are several ways in which you can enable timetracking in QuickBooks. When you create a new QuickBooks company file using the File -> New Company option and go through the EasyStep Interview there is a window that specifically asks "Do you want to track time in QuickBooks?" [caption id="attachment_1974" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Right click on the image to enlarge it"][/caption] If your QuickBooks company file wasn't set up using the EasyStep Interview, turning on timetracking and timesheets is an easy task, but you'll find that it is slightly more hidden. Turning on timesheets will require that you be logged into QuickBooks in single user mode as the…

03Mar 2011 by Shannon Tucker

Warning Signs: Is Your QuickBooks File Getting Too Big?

From Our Guest Bloggers, General QuickBooks News, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

Have you ever had a dream where you desperately needed to run fast (you’re being chased by Sasquatch, say) but your feet just won’t go? Your feet can only go in slow motion? If some of your QuickBooks reports seem stuck in molasses, or it’s taking a minute or more to save an invoice, that’s about as fun as a bad dream. Performance problems in QuickBooks are one warning sign that your QuickBooks data file is probably getting too big. (How big is too big? We’ll look at that in a minute.) Another warning sign is when you get random errors or crashes in QuickBooks. It doesn’t crash ALL the time, and you can’t reproduce the problem whenever you want (as if you want to!) But QuickBooks sometimes flakes out…

28Feb 2011 by Nancy Smyth

Your QuickBooks Company Data File, the IRS and You

Be A Better Bookkeeper, General QuickBooks News, IRS Information, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

Yes, it's true. The IRS can *LEGALLY request a backup of your QuickBooks (or Peachtree) company data file if you are being audited. BACKGROUND: In 2010, the IRS purchased somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 licenses for the QuickBooks 2010 Premier Accountant Edition from an ISP (Inuit Solutions Provider) and not directly from Intuit as it is made to look in announcements (SEE NOTE BELOW). Approximately 1,100 agents were trained to utilize QuickBooks and these agents have been instructed to obtain a copy of the taxpayer's data base for the year under examination ONLY when it is necessary. This method of examination of taxpayer records will not be used in all cases -- however, it will be up to the examiner. When requested, the electronic files should be provided on a…

Category: QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup