A QuickBooks tip for creating a pre-set or memorized Estimate with a standard set of items that will automatically display whenever you create an estimate.
Some contractors, and many other types of businesses as well, frequently prepare an Estimate, Schedule of Values, Proposal, or Quote for different customers that use the exact same items – or groups of items, just with different pricing. Manually creating this same bid over and over by pulling the items into the form is a repetitive and time-consuming task that can easily be automated in QuickBooks by memorizing it.
Follow these simple steps to create a pre-set estimate with standard items and memorize it in QuickBooks
- Pull up a blank estimate form
- Build your bid using Items (cost codes) from your Items List
- Do NOT add any dollar amounts
- Review the basic proposal carefully to make sure that you’ve included all the standard items
- Press the CTRL and “M” keys at the same time (this tells QuickBooks that you want to Memorize the transaction on your screen)
- QuickBooks may present you with a message window that states: When you memorize this estimate, QuickBooks removes the customer:job so that the estimate can be recalled for any customer. Click the OK button.
- Next, a Memorize Transaction window will appear. Use the Name field to hold a description for this quote (Site Work, etc.), select the radio button next to Do Not Remind Me and click the OK button. You can also close the Create Estimate window.
You’ve now created a pre-set Estimate containing standard items that your company uses for bidding.
Using or recalling the memorized Estimate
The next time that you need to create a bid, follow these simple steps:
- Click the Estimates icon from the Home Page OR from the Customers menu choose Estimates OR From the Lists menu -> choose Memorized Transactions OR press the CTRL and the “T” keys at the same time
- Click on the transaction name -> and click the Enter Transaction button
- Select the Customer:Job, review, add any additional/special items for this project, enter pricing, print, and save.
NOTE: Make sure that you always carefully review the information on the form before you print it to make sure that all of the required items, specific to this job have been included. You can add or remove items from the base group that you initially memorized.
I hope that you have found this article to be helpful, if so please take a moment to leave a comment.
There are many times that a contractor will want to create a budget, to capture the costs and markup, for a job that they are working on. There are several methods to do so, but the one that I like best is to create a custom Estimate that will track estimated costs (the budget) a planned mark-up and a fixed sales price to the customer. This method is available to contractors using QuickBooks Pro, Premier (any flavor), or Enterprise (any flavor).
To accomplish this we’ll start at the Lists menu -> Templates ->
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This will open a window displaying a list of all the available form templates within QuickBooks; scroll down until you find the Custom Estimate template – click on it to highlight it.
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Click the Templates button at the bottom and select Duplicate -> Estimate -> and click OK. Your list now contains a template named Copy of: Custom Estimate. Double-click on this template. This opens the Basic Customization window.
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Click the Manage Templates button, this opens the Manage Templates window. In the Template Name field, change the name FROM Copy of: Custom Estimate to something like Estimate with Budget and click the OK button.
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Back at the Basic Customization window, you can:
- Insert/Use your company logo on the Estimate form by clicking into the box just in front of the words “Use logo”, this activates the Select Logo button and you can browse to the location of your logo file on your computer.
- Select a Color Scheme - click the drop down menu and choose from: Black, Gray, Maroon, Green, Blue or Beige.
- Change Font For – Title, Company Name, Company Address, Labels, Data, Subtotals Label, or Totals Label; you can change the Font Style, Color, and Size.
- Company & Transaction Information – select by checking whether or not you with to display Company Name, Company Address, Fax Number, Phone Number, Email Address, or Web Site Address. Click the Update Information button to make sure that the items you have selected are available in the Company Information window.
- Additional Customization button – this is the button that we want to click on.
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Clicking the Additional Customization button displays a window with several tabs – Header, Columns, Footer, and Print. These tabs allow you to design an Estimate that will meet the needs of your company. Starting with the Header tab, you can choose whether you want to print the following items on the actual Estimate form or to simply display them on your Estimate form, you can also change the titles of all the options available. Standard options include: Title (form Title), Date, Estimate #, Name/Address (billing), Ship To, Project/Job, P.O. Number, Terms, Due Date, Rep, Account Number, FOB, Other, and any Custom Fields that you have created in the Customer and/or Job Record.
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When you have made your selections, click on the Columns tab. Here you want to make sure that the Item, Description, Quantity, Cost, Amount, Markup, and Total items are selected to display on your Screen; while the Description, Quantity, Amount and Total are selected to Print on the actual form. You can also change the title of these fields if you wish – for example, you can change the Markup title to Profit & Overhead.
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Click on the Footer tab. Here, you can choose to Print a Message, Subtotal, Sales Tax, Total, and Signature on the final form. You will not be able to choose to display on your form the Subtotal, Signature, or Plain Text items. When you are ready click the Layout Designer button.
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The Layout Designer allows you to arrange the elements that you have selected to appear on your printed Estimate form. In most instances clicking on an item will allow you to drag it to another location or resize it.
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When you have arranged everything to your satisfaction click the OK button twice, and close the Templates List window.
Using the New Estimate:
When you use the new Estimate form, you need to use it in a specific order – enter information in the Item, Quantity, Cost and the Markup/Profit & Overhead columns. Overhead & Profit can be entered as a fixed dollar amount or a percentage – if you use a percentage you MUST enter the % sign.
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When you enter the line items on your estimate in this way, QuickBooks automatically calculates the Total that you will be charging your customer using the following formula: Quantity (15) times Cost (125.00) = Est. Amount (1875.00) plus Profit & Overhead (33.3% or 624.375) equals Total (2499.38). You’ll also notice that QuickBooks will keep track of the totals of your Estimated Amount, your Profit & Overhead, and the Total that you will charge your customer.
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When you’ve entered all of the vendor bills for this job and have billed it off to your customer, you should run an Actual vs. Estimate Report to see how you did. Compare the numbers from the report to the totals of your Estimate to see where you need to adjust your Profit & Overhead. Keep in mind that any difference in cost will effect your total Profit & Overhead.
Let’s assume that you had a small job, you estimated costs at $2375.00 added a total Profit & Overhead of $749.38 for a total contract of $3124.38.
When all bills were entered your actual cost was $2500.00 or $125.00 more than you Estimated; this means that your Profit on the Job is really $624.38 ($749.38 Estimated Profit & Overhead MINUS $125.00).
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Having access to this information is vital to your bidding process.
As a business owner there can be several different situations that you encounter where you might need to include a long legal disclaimer or explanation when you sell a specific item, offer special discounts, provide warranty disclaimers and information or explain your payment requirements when bidding on a job or even invoicing a customer.
There are four different methods for addressing this issue; the one that you choose will depend on what makes the most sense for your business:
- Items
- Template
- Letters Function
- Outside of QuickBooks
- Using Items to add long disclaimers – If the additional information needs to be included when a specific product is sold, that information can be included in the description OR you can create a new item with a zero sales cost for the purpose of adding the information to a Purchase Order, an Estimate, or an Invoice. The advantage of creating a separate item is that you can place the disclaimer item where you would like it on the form; right after the item it relates to, or at the bottom of an Estimate form. Later, you can delete it for billing purposes – as long as both you and your customer have a copy of the Estimate that contains the detailed information.
- Modifying the Form Template to include long disclaimers – If the disclaimer is long and you have the same disclaimer for every Estimate you create, for example your billing terms, and would like to make it a standard part of your form, using the Long Text Disclaimer section on the template itself may be the best solution. Choose Lists -> Templates -> select form -> Edit. The text can be entered and then the font size and placement can be adjusted using the Layout Designer.
- Using the QuickBooks Letters function – If the disclaimer is exceedingly long, after you create the form create an accompanying Letter in QuickBooks. Access the Letters function from the Customer Center by clicking on the Word option. Use this method with option with option 1 or 2 above to indicate that additional information is included on a separate page.
- Outside of QuickBooks – Depending on what needs to be included, it might make more sense to print the disclaimer on the back of the form. It would also be possible to use this method in conjunction with option 1 or 2 to state something along the lines of “see additional disclaimer information on the back of this form” to include a reference to the information without having to actually include it on the form.
