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.
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.
Wishing you all a happy, successful, and prosperous New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season with family and friends.
The holiday season is wonderful – but it’s a time of short work weeks and lots of non-work related activities – I don’t know about you but in some ways I’m REALLY glad the holiday season is over! But unfortunately, I feel like a need a vacation just to get myself ready to go back to work and deal with the things ahead!
Coming back to work after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays can be tough – there are all the things that we need to catch up on that were set aside because of short work weeks and of course January means getting ready for W-2′s, final quarterlies, taxes, etc.
Perhaps your company is implementing new software to automate time-consuming tasks, workflow procedures for the new year that will help you all get your jobs done quicker and more efficiently, or you are thinking about signing up for some QuickBooks training classes so that you can perform your bookkeeping tasks more efficiently.
What are your goals for the new year?
Do you have a plan?
Do you have a list of things that you want to accomplish this year?
I have a long list of things that I need and want to do this year.
One of the things that I want to do is to offer more QuickBooks training, for our customers and site visitors, through reasonably priced eBooks, pre-recorded and live webinars. I’m also working on updating many of the eBooks that I’ve previously offered here on the blog for free – once the eBooks have been updated and released, I will be selling them for $7.00 to $35.00 – depending on the length and subject matter. I’ll be announcing their release hear on the blog as they are completed.
As a visitor to our site what would you like to see for upcoming training subjects?
Have a great first week back to work!
Dealing with special customer invoicing requirements can be a royal pain! Sometimes it feel like each customer you deal with says “if you don’t invoice me like THIS you aren’t going to get paid”. While QuickBooks is a very flexible software program, sometimes it’s very difficult to meet the requirements of specific customers or clients. Below is a perfect example, submitted by a reader of just how difficult billing requirements can be.
I use QuickBooks Contractor version as a self-employed contractor with a hospital. The problem is I get the job on a P.O. from the hospital, say it’s for $80,000. As I do different stages of the job I bill the hospital for that stage and they send me a check. When I do the next stage the hospital wants the invoice to reflect the original P.O. and the money they have already paid. How do I do that on this software? Jean
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Jean, I’m pretty certain that you can meet these requirements – it will cause some extra work on your part each time you are ready to bill the hospital for the next stage; but I don’t think it will be a lot of work.
Go ahead and create your invoice as usual – I’m making a BIG assumption here that you take the PO from the hospital and set that up as a QuickBooks Estimate and generate Progress Invoices from your Estimate {but even if you don’t that’s ok}.
Once you are viewing that Invoice in QuickBooks, click the Letters icon at the top and choose Prepare an Invoice Letter
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When the Choose a Letter Template window appears, select Invoice Letter with Details and then click the Next button
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This now sends your Invoice into Microsoft Word and by default provides information about the invoice that you can then modify to meet the invoicing requirements of the hospital.
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For example, I would change the heading called Invoice Amount $720.00 to read Original PO Amount $80,000.00, Invoice Balance $720.00 to read Previous Payments Received $XXX.XX, and add a line that reads Current Payment Due $720.00.
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NOTE: You can edit this letter template and include the changes to the wording – that way all you have to do is enter the amounts for Original PO and Previous Payments. To Edit a letter template go to the Company menu -> choose Prepare Letters with Envelopes -> Customize Letter Templates -> View or Edit Existing Letter Templates -> choose Invoice Templates -> Invoice Letter with Detail.
QuickBooks has a lot of built-in functionality – the problem is finding it! We hope you found this QuickBooks tip for dealing with special invoicing requirements to be helpful. If so please take a moment to leave a comment or share it on your favorite social network.
QuickBooks 2012 has both good and bad pop-up messages – just like any other version of QuickBooks, but there is nothing more annoying than having an ad pop-up when you are working in QuickBooks. Let’s be honest, getting rid of the message is another mouse click that you have to make and if messages and ads are popping up frequently we get into the habit of not reading what they have to say and miss something that could very well be important. This article discusses how you can turn off most of them in QuickBooks 2012.
Ok, I get it – Intuit is a business that makes it’s money selling software and services to it’s customers; but as a customer/business owner I have already purchased the software and probably have the services that I need already in place; so to be honest I get really annoyed with pop-up messages and ads. I bet you do also.
To be fair, there are actually some good pop-up messages in QuickBooks – for example:
- those that prompt or remind you to add a class to a transaction when you’ve forgotten and you’ve turned on the class tracking feature
- the one that warns you when you are posting a transaction directly to Retained Earnings – which is something that you really do NOT want to do
- the warnings that appear when you accidentally select a date that is 90 days in the past or 30 days in the future
- the warning that will appear if you enter duplicate bill numbers for the same vendor
- the warning that will appear if you enter a check number, invoice number, estimate number, etc. that has previously been used
For the most part messages & pop-ups can be controlled through settings in the Preferences section {Edit menu -> Preferences}; where you will find both personal and company preference settings. Only the QuickBooks Administrator can make changes to the settings in the Company Preferences tab when they are logged into QuickBooks in single-user mode; yes, another inconvenience but one that is well worth the effort. I highly recommend that the QuickBooks Administrator take the time to check out the Company Preference tab for each of the 22 different sections and choose which types of messages should and should not appear.
Individual users also have some control over what messages appear. For experienced users, I recommend that they to to the Edit menu -> choose Preferences and:
- select Desktop View -> My Preferences tab and uncheck the Show Getting Started Window
- select General -> My Preferences tab and uncheck the Bring back all one-time messages, Turn off pop-up messages for products and services, and Show ToolTips for clipped text
- select Sales & Customers -> My Preferences and uncheck the Show Payment toolbar on Receive Payments and Sales Receipts forms if your company does not wish to add Intuit credit card or eCheck processing
- select Service Connections -> My Preferences and uncheck Give me the option of saving a file whenever I download Web Connect data and If QuickBooks is run by my browser, don’t close it after Web Connect is done – if you do not use Online banking
Many pop-up windows and messages have a “Don’t show this again” checkbox option, checking this option instead of just clicking the OK button will rid you of the annoying box for good; so taking a minute or so each time a window pops up can help you to make informed decisions and rid you of wasted mouse clicks later. I know, sometimes it’s just “easier” at the moment to click the OK button just to get rid of the window – but that is a bad habit to get into.
Some advertising messages, you just can’t get rid of, for example the Do More with QuickBooks block on the Home page, but you can close it.
In QuickBooks 2012, Intuit has added a new “advertising” message to printed Employee Pay Stubs – you’ll now find a Powered by Intuit logo on each pay stub that you print for your employees. I found this to be quite annoying. Only the QuickBooks Administrator can remove this logo by going to the Edit menu -> Preferences -> Payroll & Employees -> Company Preferences -> Pay Stub & Voucher Printing -> and uncheck the Print Intuit logo option.
Are you annoyed with pop-up messages and ads? If so please take a moment to leave a comment or share this article with others on your favorite social networking site.
