QuickBooks for Contractors Tip – Receiving & Applying Joint Checks

Vendors & Accounts Payable
A QuickBooks for contractors tip about receiving and applying joint checks from a general contractor to pay a lower tier subcontractor or material supplier for work completed  or materials on a construction project. Quite frequently, in the construction industry, a contractor will receive a joint check from a General Contractor to pay their lower tier subcontractors or material suppliers for work completed and/or materials delivered to the construction project’s job site. Unlike many high-end construction accounting packages, QuickBooks doesn’t have a way to handle this automatically — or easily. This QuickBooks for contractors tip provides what we consider to be a best practice when a situation like this arises. Problem: Your company, Sam Subcontracting, received a $10,000.00 joint check from Joe's General Contracting; which is made out to both your…
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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…
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QuickBooks 2012 Announced

QuickBooks 2012 - What's New
QuickBooks 2012 release announced by Intuit.  Learn about new features and functionality.  Last year we published a 142 page eBook on the features found in QuickBooks 2011; see what we have in store for the 2012 version. Well folks, it's that time of year again.  Intuit announced the launch of QuickBooks 2012 on Twitter early this morning with a link off to an official Press Release indicating that it would be available to purchase beginning September 26 directly from Intuit websites. As an Intuit Beta Tester I've been working with the QuickBooks 2012 Premier Accountant version since the middle of July. Below is a list of just some of the new features and functionality that Intuit is saying that you can expect to find in QuickBooks 2012, per their announcement…
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QuickBooks Tip-Adding Project Information to Invoices/Estimates

Customers & Accounts Receivable
This QuickBooks tip discusses adding project information - such as the project name and location - to Invoices and Estimates - by using the Ship To Address block in the job record and modify the template slightly. There are many times that a contractor, or other business owner, needs to display project information - such as the project name and location - on invoices and estimates.  Displaying project information is very useful, especially when a business is working on more than one job or project for the same customer and needs to make it clear which job or project they are talking about when it's time to create an Estimate or an invoice. Adding Project Information to Invoices & Estimates While there are a couple of ways to add project…
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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…
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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…
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QuickBooks Tip – How Much Data Can QuickBooks Hold?

Be A Better Bookkeeper, General QuickBooks News, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup
How much data can your QuickBooks company file hold before it becomes "stuffed", overflowing like a file cabinet, and SLOW?  This is a very good question that most people don't take into consideration -- well because it's software and should hold an unlimited amount of data. QuickBooks Pro and Premier are designed for small businesses with 20 or fewer employees and annual revenues of less than $1 million per year, according to the latest information from the ProAdvisor certification study materials.  It is intended to store at least 2 years of detailed information in a company file - this allows you to compare your current business years performance with that of a previous year. Quickbooks Enterprise is designed for larger businesses having 20-250 employees, needing up to 30 simultaneous users,…
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QuickBooks Tip – Upgrading to 2011 Forms & Template Errors

QuickBooks 2011 - What's New?
Upgrading to QuickBooks Premier Account 2011 caused some errors with my existing forms and form templates. Earlier this week I had to bite the bullet and upgrade my own QuickBooks file, moving it from the 2008 Premier Accountant version to the 2011 Premier Accountant Edition; as part of our own move from Windows XP to Windows 7. Yes, folks just like many of you we have been moving software and multitudes of data from XP machines to Windows 7 and updating our QuickBooks company data file.  Not a fun task, but a necessary one. Upgrading our QuickBooks file was an easy task, we have a rather large QuickBooks file and the time it took to do the actual update seemed to be much faster than with previous upgrades.  Our file…
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QuickBooks Contractor Tip – Handling Negative Change Orders

Customers & Accounts Receivable
Change Orders are a fact of life that a contractor must deal with on just about every construction project that they are involved with. Construction contracts start with an original bid amount for specific cost codes, phases of work, or line items.  However, most construction contracts change as work proceeds; resulting in both increases and decreases or positive and negative change orders - which affect the original bid amount. There are many ways in which people will handle Change Orders when using QuickBooks, such as just going to the original Estimate and changing the dollar amounts of the affected items.  This is a "quick and easy fix"; however, it doesn't leave a good documentation trail for what occurred on the project and can cause a lot of confusion. Handling change…
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QuickBooks 2011 – Batch Invoicing Increases Efficiency

Customers & Accounts Receivable, QuickBooks 2011 - What's New?
Batch Invoicing, is a very useful new feature of QuickBooks 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.  It allows small business owners to create an invoice that can then be sent to multiple customers. I'm sure there are many good examples of companies that would find this feature beneficial.  A good example, that comes to mind, for using the Batch Invoicing option, would be a landscaper or a garbage collection company to bill customers weekly for mowing or trash removal. Batch Invoicing is not available when Multi-Currency has been enabled in the Company Preferences tab of the Multiple Currencies Preference.  (Edit menu -> Preferences -> Multiple Currencies -> Company Preferences tab.) The Batch Invoicing option uses individual customer information; such as, terms, sales tax, and preferred send method for invoices.  BEFORE you…
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QuickBooks 2011 – New Balance Sheet by Class Report – Part 8

QuickBooks 2011 - What's New?, Reports
The Balance Sheet by Class Report was first introduced with QuickBooks 2011, however, it is also available in QuickBooks 2012, 2013, and 2014; has specific requirements for handling many or our normal day-to-day transactions; and it gives users the option of selecting “Classes” (fund, location, profit center, or other category) as their column/class grouping. Over the last several days, I’ve been discussing and sharing some information about how we all will need to change our data entry procedures in order to utilize the Balance Sheet by Class Report available in QuickBooks 2011; little did I realize when I started delving into the specifics of this report, that making it work would be so complex. Previous QuickBooks 2011 - New Balance Sheet by Class Report  articles include: Part 1, we touched…
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QuickBooks 2011 – New Balance Sheet by Class Report – Part 6

QuickBooks 2011 - What's New?, Reports
The Balance Sheet by Class Report was first introduced with QuickBooks 2011, however, it is also available in QuickBooks 2012, 2013, and 2014; has specific requirements for handling many or our normal day-to-day transactions; it gives users the option of selecting “Classes” (fund, location, profit center, or other category) as their column/class grouping. Over the last several days, I’ve been discussing and sharing some information about how we all will need to change our data entry procedures in order to utilize the Balance Sheet by Class Report available in QuickBooks 2011. In previous articles: QuickBooks 2011 – New Balance Sheet by Class Report – Part 1, we touched briefly on the fact that transactions will have to be entered in a very specific manner and there are many data entry…
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