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.
This week’s Freebie Friday – 100 Essential Tips for Microsoft Office 2010 comes from PC Magazine.
Most of us use Office, and most of us could make better use of it, too. Check out these tips, sorted by application to learn basic tricks and advanced tips for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access.
The editors have shaken down the programs and pinpointed 100 tips and tricks to help put you back in command. These tips cover not only the basics, like deleting that infuriating line that appears when you type one too many hyphens in Word (one that I find especially annoying), to more advanced tricks, such as connecting your email to social websites and services.
They’ve also included some tips about features that you might not know to search for at all but which offer a lot of value and are worth knowing. The tips are separated by program, and some are further parceled out into sections for beginners, intermediate-level users, and advanced users. Each tip is accompanied by a screenshot to further guide you, no matter your comfort level. All of the tips will work in Microsoft Office 2010, and many are also compatible with earlier editions of Office, too.
| 5 Essential Microsoft Office 2010 Tips for Everyone The five how-tos in this piece will show you some of the most fundamental things you’ll want to do in Microsoft Office, no matter which program you use most. |
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| 15 Essential Microsoft Word 2010 Tips for Beginners If you consider yourself a novice with Microsoft Word, start your Office education by picking up a few of these 15 tricks. You’ll soon find that they’ll become second-nature actions that you’ll be performing with a couple of clicks or keystrokes. |
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| 10 Essential Microsoft Excel 2010 Tips for Beginners Fumbling with spreadsheets can makeanyone feel like a complete dolt. These ten essential functions and tricks will make you feel much more adept at creating and managing charts, lists, and data. |
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| 14 Essential Microsoft Outlook 2010 Tips for Beginners Whether you’re brand-new on the job or a 20-year veteran, chances are your company uses Microsoft Outlook and you only know as much as you’ve ever needed to get by day-to-day. Pick up 14 new ideas, and learn how to implement them, from this list. |
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| 14 Essential Microsoft Excel 2010 Tips for Intermediate Users Comfortable with Microsoft Excel? Good! Let’s move up a half-step to the next level of difficulty. Click through the title to find 14 new things you can do with spreadsheets. |
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| 10 Essential Microsoft Word 2010 Tips for Advanced Users Let’s say you’ve mastered the basics of Microsoft Word. These nine tips will expand your horizons to do some advanced tricks with macros, use OpenType typography, export a Word document to your blog, and more. |
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| 5 Essential Microsoft Excel 2010 Tips for Advanced Users Fine tune your Excel skills with a few more masterful tricks. These five tips cover working with transposed tables, how to create Sparkline Microchartsin Excel, and more. |
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| 8 Essential Microsoft Outlook 2010 Tips for Intermediate & Advanced Users After you’ve gone through our basic Outlook tips, turn to this next batch to make your email life even smoother and more efficient. Outlook can perform a few amazing stunts—don’t miss out on any of them. |
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| 9 Essential Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 Tips The last time you saw someone give a dynamite presentation, filled with video clips and text that was actually large enough to read at a distance, you probably made a mental note to teach yourself some new PowerPoint skills. And, lo, that day is finally here. Learn how to check the accessibility of your presentations, integrate videos, use the animation painter, and more. |
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| 10 Essential Microsoft Access 2010 Tips for Beginners This ten-point primer for Microsoft Access users starts out with the basics and moves into slightly more difficult territory. Whether you’re totally new to Access or have been struggling for a while to learn it, these ten simple tips will help you on your journey to becoming more proficient with databases. |
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Have a great weekend everyone!
This week’s Freebie Friday is an eBook – from MakeUseOf.com – Microsoft Office 2010: Ultimate Tips & Tricks.
Learn to get the most out of the latest version of Microsoft Office with the latest free guide from MakeUseOf! Office 2010 includes many improvements over 2007. As with all Office releases, however, these improvements are far from obvious to the average user.
Enter Office 2010: Ultimate Tips and Tricks. This manual, by author Matt Smith, points out all the best new features of Microsoft’s latest office suite, and explains them all in one handy guide. In most programs, it’s not hard to find every single feature, but Office 2010 is so expansive that even veteran users will often find that they aren’t expert in even half of the capabilities the software offers.
Whether you recently purchased Office 2010 and want to get the most out of it, or are considering an upgrade, you don’t want to miss this free guide. There’s much to be learned here, so check it out!
This guide will show you how to:
- Get the most out of 2010?s cloud capabilities.
- Turn off the annoying file block feature.
- Speed up document creation in Word with building blocks.
- Present data at a glance with Excel’s new Sparklines.
- Edit video from within PowerPoint.
- Broadcast a PowerPoint presentation over the web, live.
- Adding social functionality to Outlook.
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Download Microsoft Office 2010 Ultimate Tips & Tricks from MakeUseOf.com
The Texas Department of Transportation, like many other state agencies, is requiring electronic submission of certified payroll reports, through its Electronic Project Records System (EPRS).
TxDOT EPRS provides contractors with multiple functions which they can utilize; however, one of the primary functions of the EPRS is that of collecting Electronic Certified Payrolls (E-Payrolls), instead of requiring contractors to submit paper certified payroll report forms for review.
E-Payrolls may be uploaded into the EPRS from a contractor’s computer IF they have the proper information, in a specific data order, and it is a .CSV file format – otherwise the contractor will have to take his printed paper certified payroll report and manually input it in the EPRS System.
Some software companies are updating their payroll systems to provide their construction clients with the ability to create electronic output files, such as the .CSV file required by TxDOT, in addition to printing a standard paper report for the contractor to keep in his job file. However, the problem for the software companies is that there is no standard output file that is used consistently and each state or agency wants the electronic file to not only contain ALL of the information that is required on their “paper form” but include additional information as well.
For example:
- Texas Department of Transportation requires a .CSV file
- Elation Systems, Inc. requires an XML file
- TRS Consultants, Inc. requires an XML file
- LCPtracker requires an .XLS file
- Sandia National Laboratory requires an XML file
- Alaska Department of Labor & Workforce Development requires a .TXT file
- Wisconsin Department of Transportation requires an XML file
- Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development requires an .XLS file
Some computer savvy contractors create a “master” certified payroll reporting form (based on the requirements of the State agency that they must submit them to) in Excel, manually input the payroll data each week and attempt to “save” it in any of the above mentioned file formats listed above – only to discover that the file is rejected and they have to log and manually type the information into the Labor Compliance System.
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Certified Payroll Solution, a QuickBooks integrated application, will read your QuickBooks payroll data and generate paper forms and/or all of the required electronic upload formats noted above – included the format required by the Texas Department of Transportation .CSV format (this functionality will be released via a program update on 7/30/2010 and has been thoroughly tested by TxDOT).
Request a FREE 30-day trial to see for yourself.
