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 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 obtain accurate job costing reports; from eBooks, live webinars, and recorded training sessions.
You’ll find high-quality (budget friendly) training without having to leave the comfort of your home or office.
Important Facts About Items Left as Billable
Are you aware that if click into the billable column, which places a checkmark in the column {OR you leave that little Invoice icon found on many forms active and don’t “X” it out older versions of QuickBooks} that the information relating to that transaction line is stored within your QuickBooks file in a “waiting to be billed” status just taking up additional space and making your file larger than normal?
Selecting the billable column doesn’t mean that you want the costs assigned to this job {which is a common thought or assumption} but rather it tells QuickBooks that you want to take the information about that transaction and put it into a temporary database until you create an invoice for a specific customer using the Time/Costs button on the Invoice form.
If you really don’t pass these costs or time entries onto customers using the Time/Costs feature of QuickBooks – then this temporary database is just out there growing and growing – which causes the overall size of your QuickBooks file to become bigger and bigger.
If you are wondering if this is happening to you, an easy way to find out it to run an “Unbilled Costs by Job Report” {Report menu -> Jobs, Time & Mileage -> Unbilled Costs by Job} and look to see if there are a lot of entries in this report, if there are; all of those entries are just sitting there waiting for you to do something with them.
Download our 2 page article for instructions on how to clear out old unbilled costs – without having to edit each item in the report and manually making them unbillable.
We hope that you’ve found today’s Tuesday Training article to be helpful to your business – if so please take a moment to leave a comment or share this with others on your favorite social media network using the buttons below.
So how do you find a “good” bookkeeper and test their knowledge before hiring them? Or, perhaps you are ready to hire a CPA to help you with your business and your books. Congratulations! We all know what a struggle it is to “try to do everything” yourself, and it almost goes without saying that as a busy contractor, we also know that time is best spent on the job and not in the office handling paperwork.
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 obtain accurate job costing reports; from eBooks, live webinars, and recorded training sessions.
You’ll find high-quality (budget friendly) training without having to leave the comfort of your home or office.
Construction Bookkeeper Test – $25.00
So how do you find a “good” bookkeeper and test their knowledge before hiring them? Well, we have scoured the internet searching for a “good” QuickBooks and Construction Bookkeeping Test, and while we have found some that would test an applicant’s basic knowledge of QuickBooks as well as some basic accounting knowledge, none have addressed any construction related functions. Being disappointed in what we have found, we’ve designed our own – somewhat based on issues that we deal with on a day to day basis supporting our own software which integrates with QuickBooks – and we are happy to offer you a copy {complete with the answers}.
Our Bookkeepers test asks applicants to answer a total of 145 questions, covering 5 different areas of knowledge.
Purchase your copy today for $25.00.
Hiring a Bookkeeper or CPA
We all know what a struggle it is to “try to do everything” yourself, and it almost goes without saying that as a busy contractor, we also know that time is best spent on the job and not in the office handling paperwork.
Before you hire someone to handle your books or your taxes, check their skills and lay the ground rules to make sure that you are getting the right person for your business and never make the big mistake of just “turning” it all over to someone (no matter how enticing that idea may be). Always keep an eye on what is going on.
FREE eBook – click here to download.
Additional Resources from the IRS
Even the IRS feels that this is an important subject, and the IRS urges you to choose that preparer wisely. Most return preparers are professional, honest and provide excellent service to their clients. But it is the taxpayer who is legally responsible for what’s on his or her tax return even if it is prepared by someone else.
We hope that you’ve found today’s Tuesday Training items to be helpful to your business – if so please take a moment to leave a comment or share this with others on your favorite social media network using the buttons below.
Knowing how to complete an AIA G-702/G-703 billing form and documenting change orders are important for your overall cash flow, if they aren’t done correctly – well you don’t get paid on time! This Tuesday Training segment will provide you with detailed information on both
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 obtain accurate job costing reports; from eBooks, live webinars, and recorded training sessions.
You’ll find high-quality (budget friendly) training without having to leave the comfort of your home or office.
AIA G-702/G-703 Training Exercise – $25.00
Most anyone will tell you that completing the AIA G-702 and G-703 forms by hand is frustrating and difficult. To fill out one correctly, you pretty much have to:
- forget about any basic accounting principals you’ve ever learned
- ignore change orders that have been submitted or approved, but not processed
- ignore money that is still outstanding from previously submitted applications for payment
You need to realize that the payment applications that you submit are an important piece of your overall cash flow management. When your payment applications get screwed up — bad things happen; none of which put you in “good standing” with the General Contractor or Project Owner, and can ultimately damage your company’s overall cash position.
This 38 page eBook contains everything you’ll need to learn how to complete these billing forms correctly; including a sample AIA training exercise that walks you through, from start to finish, how to complete an AIA G-702 & G-703 form by hand.
Purchase your copy today for $25.00.
Documenting Change Orders, Extra Work Orders & Job Costs
It almost goes without saying that on any construction project, a contractor’s ability to get paid for the Original contract, Extra Work Orders and/or Change Orders is vital to the business’s profit margin.
It’s the start of a new contruction season, is your job costing system in place?
Free eBook – click here to download.
Freebie Friday’s are all about valuable Free eBooks and eGuides, sometimes they are eBooks that we’ve created and other times they are eBooks that we’ve found on the web that we feel are valuable and could be of interest to you.
Back in the “old days”, when you purchased QuickBooks it came with a manual – yup, that’s right I said a manual – an actual honest to goodness manual bound as a softcover book. I have a bunch of old ones hanging around.
QuickBooks doesn’t come with a printed manual anymore, but there are manuals available in eBook form – downloadable pdf’s, you just have to know where to look for them.
You can find manuals for QuickBooks Premier, Enterprise, and Mac versions straight from Intuit’s support area at http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/Articles/INF12758, once this page loads click on the plus sign next to QuickBooks 2011 Guides – and you’ll find them.
You can also get eGuides for older versions of QuickBooks from this same link for QuickBooks 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any eBooks or eGuides for QuickBooks Pro users, but you can download the Premier version eGuide or use the built-in Help.
Premier users can also find the link for this eBook directly within the QuickBooks software, by going to the Help menu -> choosing Learning Center Tutorials -> and clicking on the What’s New tab.
Have a great weekend and check back next week to see what is being offered on Freebie Friday!
Oh sweet Friday – sometimes you come way to fast and other times not fast enough!
Yup, it’s time for “Friday eBook” here on the QuickBooks for Contractors blog.
This week, I confess, I took a shortcut and turned our popular series “Your QuickBooks file, the IRS & You” and turned it into an eBook and called it good! Friday’s come too fast for me, in terms of getting things done (I do just about all of my blogging at night, early in the morning, or on the weekend otherwise I would never get any real work done during the day) – so I hope you will excuse this shortcut on my part.
One of the reasons that I decided to turn it into an eBook is so that you can download it and distribute it to your clients. Feel free to include it on your website or an upcoming newsletter – the ONLY “catch” is that I will require you to distribute the entire ebook and not act as if you wrote it yourself.
Purchase your, redistributable copy of “Your QuickBooks file, the IRS & You” by completing a short request form.
