The QuickBooks Weekly Timesheet can cause a lot of confusion for users who are implementing employee time tracking for the first time, mainly because the timesheet contains both a Service Item and a Payroll Item. This article will explain what each column is used for and some common pitfalls that can happen.
Job costing and employee time tracking are important aspects of many businesses – not just construction businesses. However, when you initially set up timetracking there are many things that can cause confusion.
About Service Items:
The Service Item column represents the type of work that is being performed and allows you to select/enter/choose the name of the service item/cost code from your Item List that you want to use when your charge/bill your customer for this work – OR – when you pay a subcontractor/non-employee for this item.
Even if you do not intend to charge anyone for this work, entering a service item provides a record of the amount of time spent on this specific type of work. This information will then flow through the the various “Time by” reports as well as your job costing reports..
When a Service Item is brought into an Invoice, it tells QuickBooks which accounts to use to track the income you receive and what Cost of Goods Sold/Expense account to use to track the money your company has spent – so it’s important that your items are set up to capture both Income and Expenses. This provides you with the ability to analyze which types of work/services are the most profitable and how much company time is spent on producing them.
About Payroll Items:
Payroll Item column allow you to select a Payroll Item {that also exists in the employee record} which determines how much the employee should be paid for doing the work that you selected in the Service Item column. This information will then flow through into employee paychecks and perhaps any invoices that you create that are based on billable time and costs.
What if the Payroll Item Column isn’t displayed?
When the Payroll Item column doesn’t appear in the Weekly Timesheet, for one or all employees, it usually means that the employee’s haven’t been setup to utilize timetracking, and you’ll need to check the setup in the employee record to be sure that the “Use time data to create paychecks” option has been checked and that Time tracking has been turned on in the Preferences.
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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 do Job Costing - so I thought I’d attempt to write a short article to address this.
Creating Estimates in Excel vs. QuickBooks – Pros and Cons:
Excel is REALLY easy to use – anyone can quickly whip up an Estimate, Proposal or a Work Order., you can create some great looking documents that you are proud to hand to your prospective customer. But that is about as far as you can go.
QuickBooks, on the other hand, if set up properly will allow you to create an Estimate, Proposal, Work Order, or an Invoice and perform job costing just by entering vendor bills, writing checks, entering credit card charges, and employee payroll. You then can access all kinds of Job Costing reports and an Actual vs. Estimate Report – which allows you to see the difference between what you thought you’d make on the job vs. what you actually made.
But….QuickBooks requires more work on the front end and then proper training for your employees.
I think I just heard everyone groan! There is no way that I can write a “short” article on the benefits of using QuickBooks to prepare these documents for your business, but I can provide you with some suggestions to get started.
- Is the QuickBooks Estimate function turned on? If not go to the Edit menu -> Preferences -> Jobs & Estimates -> Company Preferences tab -> set “Do You Create Estimates” AND “Do You Do Progress Invoicing” to Yes
- Modify/Customize the built in forms to meet the needs of your company using the Layout Designer, by downloading a pre-built template or by using the Create Form Design option. All of these options are available from the Lists menu -> Templates -> and then clicking the Template button at the bottom of the window.
- Create a FULL list of the services, cost codes and/or products your company uses for billing
- Have a meeting – get EVERYONE involved – take that master list of products and/or services/cost codes and come up with descriptions that EVERYONE can agree on {letting them know that they can “tweak” it more to their liking later}
- Go to the Items List and set up items that correspond to that master list of of the things your company does, creating Group Items or Inventory Assemblies if appropriate
- Create an Estimate, a Proposal, or a Work Order using the entries in your Item List – print it out and see what everyone things of it. If they are happy teach your Estimators how to use the Estimating function
- When entering Vendor bills, writing checks, or entering Credit Card Charges use the Items tab and assign the cost to the job
- Turn on time tracking, enter employee hours by Job, Service Item, and Payroll Item
- Create a Progress Invoice from an Estimate for the current amount that you are billing the customer
- Look at the Estimate vs Actual Report for a specific job and look at the report results
These suggestions are just the tip of the iceburg for taking QuickBooks from plain-Jane accounting to job-costing accounting. Use the search box on our site and enter specific keywords for additional tips.
If you can’t get your Estimators to leave Excel, there is a 3rd party application Transaction Pro Importer – that will import your Excel based Estimate into QuickBooks for you and you can implement some of the other suggestions in this article.
I hope you’ve found this article to be helpful, if so please take a moment to leave a comment or ask a question – or share it on your favorite social networking site if you think others would find it to be useful.
Strategies for Making the Move to Public Works Construction Projects Seminar – American Subcontractors Association, San Diego branch, January 19, 2012
The current economic situation has dealt a serious blow to both homebuilders and commercial contractors and many are finding themselves make the move to Public Works construction and Prevailing Wage projects. Make the move to Public Works construction will require planning and quite possibly a variety of changes in the way you currently run your existing construction business.
Join industry experts; Steve Kuzmack, President of Fringe Benefit Experts and Nancy Smyth, President of Sunburst Software Solutions, Inc. for an intensive 2 hour session on January 19, 2012; on strategies for lowering labor costs and complying with certified payroll reporting requirements on Federal and/or State funded construction projects.
Learn How:
- To reduce payroll taxes and insurance premiums on your prevailing wage projects.
- “Bona Fide” benefit plans operate and how they decrease labor costs while increasing company profits and enhance employee benefit programs.
- You, the owner, can put more pre-tax money into your personal 401K.
- To smooth out the wage discrepancies between Private and Public Work.
- To save $2.00 – $4.00+ in payroll burden per man hour – based on San Diego Wage Rates.
- Supplemental Unemployment Benefit {SUB} Plans operate – and why your field workers like them.
Learn the Pros and Cons of Paying the TOTAL Hourly Prevailing Wage Rate on Payroll:
- Impact on your company
- Impact on your employees
Learn About Types of “Bona Fide” Fringe Benefit Plans:
- SUB Plan – “Field Workers Get Paid When Not Working” {Holidays, Layoffs, Reduction in Hours}
- Pension Plan – How to Increase Owner and Staff Pre-Tax Contributions
- Health Plan – Make Health Insurance Premiums not only Pre-Income Tax but Pre-Payroll Tax as well
Learn About Bookkeeping, Accounting & Payroll Procedures:
- When you pay the full fringe rate as part of employees hourly rate of pay
- When you pay the full fringe rate to one or more “bona fide” fringe benefit plans
- When you pay a portion of the fringe benefit rate to a plan and the balance in cash
Learn About Certified Payroll Reporting Requirements:
- What is a Certified Payroll Report?
- How do I complete a Certified Payroll Report?
- Are there different requirements for State and Federally funded construction projects?
If you want to get more competitive, grow your company and create more profit; then this seminar is for you.
This event will be held:
January 19, 2012 from 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. at the SMART Safety Office, 9471 Ridgehaven Ct. #C, San Diego, CA 92123. Non-member Price $60.00. Member Price $45.00. Register for the event OR download a seminar flyer.
An “audit trail” for Accounts Receivable in QuickBooks is only one of the many complexities faced by government construction contractors. Running any sort of construction business can be difficult – but the amount of paperwork, the level of detail, and the additional requirements for a government contractor can cause 2 and sometimes 3 times the amount for a bookkeeper. Below is a question submitted by a reader named Shirley.
We are a Construction Company and do government contracting. Is it possible to use the Accounts Receivable Summary to track each Project and the invoices when received and when paid. It has been several years since I have used QuickBooks and have never used the Construction Version. We have QuickBooks 2011 Premier Construction.
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First, let me say that the Contractor version doesn’t work any differently than the Pro – it just has some built-in construction specific reports and other features that aren’t available in other versions. So your learning curve shouldn’t be difficult at all! That’s the good news 
As for using the Accounts Receivable Summary Report as an audit trail, personally I don’t think I would use that because it wouldn’t give me the detail that I would want – OR – that I “think” you are looking for. The A/R Summary report only shows you how much {total} money is overdue in 30, 60, and 90 day increments. This information may meet your needs if you just need to know how much money is how many days overdue by job.
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My own personal preference, would be to know which invoices were how many days past due; therefore, I would rather run the Accounts Receivable Aging Detail to determine exactly which invoices where outstanding.
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Both of these reports would provide me with information about just a specific job – each could be modified and filtered for a specific job or jobs.
Another very good report, especially if you are concerned about a specific job, is the Customer Open Balance Report {available from the actual QuickBooks job record and choosing Open Balance}.
Another alternative to obtain this information easily, without running and printing reports – would be to customize how job record information is displayed in QuickBook, that way anyone who has access to this type of information can easily see it without having to run, print, and then distribute reports. Remember, it’s all about efficiency and streamlining the workload/work flow. Customizing how information is displayed in the job record let’s you quickly see how much total money is outstanding for a specific job, when invoices were created {dated}, the date you anticipate receiving the money, how many days outstanding the money is, what the invoice was issued for and the open balance.
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For tracking Vendor costs you could run a Job Cost by Job and Vendor Detail, click the Modify Report button and customize it like the screenshot below:
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QuickBooks can do many things, including provide you with an “audit trail” for Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. You just have to get in there an poke around and see what works for you.
While the information provided about may not answer the original question to the 100% satisfaction of the person asking it, based on the information provided it should at least provide you with things to look at and modify to best meet your needs.
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QuickBooks 2012 will include batch timesheet creation as an enhancement to the current “Use Weekly Timesheet” feature, allowing you the option to select multiple employee or vendor names for time entry. From the information that I’ve seen, Intuit is marketing this feature to contractors as a timesaver, and it may be for some businesses, BUT THERE IS A CATCH……
Each group of employees or vendors that you select MUST work on the same Job, under the same Service Item AND the same Payroll Item MUST be used during timesheet creation – additionally, they must ALL work the same number of hours each day!
See the Batch Timesheet function in action on our YouTube video
In order to successfully use the Batch Timesheet feature in QuickBooks Pro/Premier 2012 and Enterprise 12.0:
1. You MUST enable timetracking
- Logged into QuickBooks as the QuickBooks Administrator in Single-User Mode
- From the Edit menu -> choose Preferences -> scroll to Time & Expenses {the last preference} -> click on the Company Preferences tab
- Under the Time Tracking – Do you track time option -> select Yes and set the FIRST day of your work week
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- Click OK to save your changes
2. The Use time data to create paychecks option MUST be enabled for each employee
- From the Employee menu -> choose Employee Center -> click on the Employees tab -> double-click on an employee name OR click the Edit Employee button
- From the Change tabs drop down menu -> choose Payroll & Compensation Info
- Make sure the Use time data to create paychecks option is checked.
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- Click the OK button to save the changes for this employee
- Repeat for each employee in your employee list
3. You MUST use the Weekly Timesheet function
- From the Employee menu -> choose Enter Time -> Use Weekly Timesheet OR from the Home Page -> click the Enter time icon -> Use Weekly Timesheet
- In the Name field, click the drop down list and select either Multiple Names (Payroll) OR Multiple Names (Non-Payroll)
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- In the pop-up window, select multiple names, by placing a checkmark next to the name, and click ok to finalize your selections
 Select multiple employees |
 Select vendors |
- Enter timesheet information, selecting the Job, Service Item and Payroll Item
- Click on the Save and Close button to enter the information
Be aware of a potential problem:
A potential problem that I see with this feature, is let’s say that there are 4 employees {or vendors} who worked on a Job Monday through Thursday; on Friday, only 3 of these employees {vendors} were there. When you enter multiple timesheets, I forsee most people selecting all 4 employees/vendors and automatically entering ALL of the the time for the entire week. Using the batch timesheet option, you would need to be very careful when entering hours in this type of situation – as it could result in an employee or vendor being paid for erroneous hours worked and no one catching it. On the flip side, for employees who worked overtime, additional entries would be required on their individual timesheets to record overtime hours – if not this would result in underpayment.
NOTE: If you really need this type of functionality, investigate our Crew/Overtime Entry Solution program, which allows you to enter “exceptions” {the 4th employee not working on Friday} prior to posting the time data to QuickBooks.
