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 information – such as the project name and it’s location – to an Estimate or Invoice that you generate; I’ve always used the “Ship To” block in the Job record to hold this information.
From the QuickBooks Customer Center, pick a current Job from the Customers & Job list. You can click on the job name to select it and then click the Edit Job button OR if you double-click on the job name you’ll be taken to the Edit window.
On the Address Info tab, look to see if there is any information in the “Ship To” block; if there isn’t, click the “Add New” button (located just below the Ship To block).
When you click on the “Add New” button, QuickBooks opens the Add Shipping Address Information window. Here you will enter details about the job that you want to display on your Estimates and Invoices – see sample screenshot below.
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Be sure to check the option for default shipping address, and click the OK button to save the information. Your Job record now has both a billing and shipping address.
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Next you’ll want to edit your Estimate and Invoice templates. From the Lists menu, choose Templates (if you aren’t sure which templates you use, click from the Home page click the Estimate or Invoice icons and the template name will be displayed in the upper right corner of the window), double-click on the Estimate template. This opens the Basic Customization window.
From the Basic Customization window, click on the Additional Customization button. On the Header tab – check the Screen and Print options for both the Name/Address and Ship To titles – you can even make changes to the information that displays on the final forms. For example, you can change Name/Address heading to read To Owner and Ship To to Project Information. See the before and after screenshot below.
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NOTE: You may need to change the positioning in the Layout Designer, depending on what other options you select on this window.
Click the OK button twice.
Switch to the Home Page, click the Estimate icon and choose the job that you originally edited. Your Estimate form now displays both billing and project information.
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When you print your Estimate, this same information will display on your printed form.
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We hope you’ve found this QuickBooks Tip for adding Project Information to your Estimates and Invoices to be valuable. If so please take a moment to leave a comment.
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 you want to design your invoice. To add your own company logo put a check mark in the box next to Use logo and then click on Select Logo. You can then upload the image from a file on your computer. To change the color to match your company color click on the Select Color Scheme and pick a color, then click on the Apply Color Scheme button.
You can change the font for any of the text by highlighting any field in the box below “Change Font For” and clicking on Change Font button. Do this for each text you want to change. Under the Company and Transaction information put a check mark in the box next to each piece of information you want to show on your invoice. Click on the Update Information button to update any company information.
Anytime during your customization process you can click on the Print Preview button located in the bottom right corner to see what your invoice looks like. If you don’t like what you have done, you can go back and make changes.
If you find you need to move different fields around, click on the Layout Designer button at the bottom of the window. This is what you will see:
Put your cursor on any field, highlight it and move it to the desired position. You can make the field bigger or smaller. Double click in the middle of the field to open up another window for more customization options for that particular field. It may take several tries to get it to look exactly the way you want.
Once you have your logo on your invoice and you have done some other customization your invoice will look professional.
A QuickBooks tip for creating a job cost report that displays hours worked.
Creating a job cost report displaying the hours worked by employee, on a specific job or on all jobs, for a specific week or at the end of a job can provide a contractor with vital job costing information so you can see if you correctly bid the number of man hours required on a job.
Luckily, QuickBooks will provide you with this information through the Time by Job Summary or Time by Job Detail Reports, this article will teach you how to modify the reports for your business needs, however, in order for these reports to be useful you must enter employee hours using the QuickBooks Enter Time function.
The Time by Job Summary Report
- From the Reports menu
- Choose Jobs, Time & Mileage
- Time by Job Summary
- From the Dates menu, scroll up to select ALL
This initial report will provide you with summarized information about the total number of hours worked for each QuickBooks Item/Cost Code/or section totaled by job.
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While this can provide you with useful information, perhaps you would like to filter the report to include the total time spent on a single, completed job, by cost code.
- Click the Modify Report button at the upper right – above the Dates option
- From the Modify Report: Time by Job Summary window, click on the Filters tab
- From the Choose Filter box, click on Customer:Job
- From the Customer:Job drop down menu (where it currently says All customers/jobs), select Multiple customers/jobs
- From the Select Customer:Job window, scroll through the list of Customers and Jobs until you see the job that you want and click on it to select it.
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- Click the OK button, twice
- You now have a time summary report for just this single job.
The Time by Job Detail Report
- From the Reports menu
- Choose Jobs, Time & Mileage
- Time by Job Detail Report
This initial report will provide you with detailed information about the total number of hours worked by each employee under each QuickBooks Item/Cost Code/or section; subtotaled by each cost code and totaled by job.
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While this can provide you with useful information, perhaps you would like to filter the report to include the total time spent on a single, completed job, by employee and cost code.
- Click the Modify Report button at the upper right – above the Dates option
- On the Dates tab from the Dates drop down menu, scroll up to select All, you can also add or remove columns to display in the report for Payroll Item, Class, Notes and WC Code.
- Click on the Filters tab
- From the Choose Filter box, click on Customer:Job
- From the Customer:Job drop down menu (where it currently says All customers/jobs), select Multiple customers/jobs
- From the Select Customer:Job window, scroll through the list of Customers and Jobs until you see the job that you want and click on it to select it.
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- Click the OK button, twice
- You now have a time by job detail report for just this single job.
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These reports will help you to see how accurately you bid your man hours on a job, however, they will NOT include payroll dollars. You could export the modified time by job detail report to Excel, add a column for Rate (the rate being the hourly wage PLUS the hourly labor burden), add some simple formulas to the spreadsheet and also get the total cost.
NOTE: Always check the Time by Job Detail Report for a No Item Assigned section, hours that appear in this section have been assigned to a job, but not assigned to a QuickBooks item or cost code and this will make your job costing reports inaccurate.
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You can correct the job costing reports by pulling the original hard copy timesheets and double click on each entry (which will take you to the time entry field) and you can assign the correct cost code. You will also need to go to the paycheck detail and add the cost code there as well.
We highly recommend that you run the Time by Job Detail Report each week after entering employee hours, but BEFORE you issue payroll to make sure that everything has been correctly costed to your jobs.
We hope you’ve found this post helpful – if so please leave a comment.
A QuickBooks Tip for creating Lien Waivers, Releases, and other Contract Documents from within the software by using the Letters function.
QuickBooks doesn’t have the ability to automatically generate a Lien Waiver & Release form, or any other Contract Document, like many of the more costly construction software packages, this means that QuickBooks users must find an alternative method to generate these vital contract documents.
Let’s say that you are a Subcontractor and need to generate a very simple Lien Waiver and Release form to a General Contractor.
One method is to create a Word document that has to be manually updated each time you need to generate the form.
Another method is to take that existing Word “template” and bring it into the QuickBooks Prepare Letters and Envelopes function – or create a new template if one doesn’t exist.
We’ll talk about bring the existing document into QuickBooks first:
- From the Company menu -> choose Prepare Letters with Envelopes
- Choose Customize Letter Templates
- Choose Convert an Existing Microsoft Word Document to a Letter Template, click Next
- From the Choose an Existing Microsoft Word Document window, use the Browse button to locate and select the document that you want to use as your Lien Waiver and Release Template
- Check the Customer option for #2 – Choose the type of letter for which you want to create a template.
- Click the Next button
- Enter a new name for the letter or let it default to the file name and click Ok.
Word will now launch in the background and display your basic Lien Waiver form, which you can now add QuickBooks merge fields to.
In Word 2010, click on the Add-Ins menu item along the top where you can choose to insert My Company Fields and Customer Name Fields into the document.
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As with any document created through QuickBooks you may not have access to all of the information that you need, so make sure that you do something to call out pieces of information, such as a payment amount, that you will have to enter when you actually create the letter. One way to easily identify pieces of information such as this is to simply place an “underline” at the spot in the template.
When you need to generate the Lien Waiver:
- Go to the Company menu -> Prepare Letters with Envelopes -> Customer Letters – OR – from the Customer Center -> click the Word icon -> and Prepare Customer Letters
- Choose the Customer OR Job that you want to create the Lien Waiver for and click Next
- Select the Lien Waiver template and click Next
- Enter the name and title of the person who will sign the letter and click Next
- QuickBooks will now create your Lien Waiver and open it in Word so you can add any missing information
You may need to “tweak” your template in order to make sure that everything looks correct. If so, go back to the Company menu -> choose Prepare Letters and Envelopes -> choose Customize Letter Templates -> choose View or Edit Existing Letter Templates -> click Next -> choose the Type of Letter -> select the template -> click Next -> and when the template opens in Word, make any necessary changes.
To create a new Lien Waiver template:
Go to the Company menu -> choose Prepare Letters and Envelopes -> Create a New Letter Template from Scratch -> click Next -> choose the Letter Type and give the template a name -> click Next -> Word will launch. Create your template, selecting fields from the Add-In tab.
We hope that you have found this QuickBooks Tip to be helpful, while this doesn’t solve the entire problem, it does help you to automate a time-consuming task.
If you have to generate AIA type billing as well as issue various contract documents, be sure to check out Construction Application for Payment Solution, a QuickBooks integrated add-on that will produce AIA Billing on actual AIA G-702/G-703 forms that you purchase or similar plain paper forms; which has a built-in Contract Document Manager which can gather even more information for your Contract Documents.
A QuickBooks Payroll Tip for creating a more functional Payroll Liabilities section on your Chart of Accounts.
QuickBooks, by default, provides a limited Payroll Chart of Accounts containing only two accounts – Payroll Liabilities and Payroll Expenses. When you run a Balance Sheet or a Profit & Loss Report (or look at your Chart of Accounts listing) you only see the totals with no details and have to run further reports to find the individual amounts that make up the totals. I find this to be problematic.
This article will show you how to add sub-accounts to the standard Payroll Liabilities account so that you can quickly and easily “see” the individual amounts for each payroll liability and how to edit your existing payroll items to accurately point to these new accounts. A little extra work up front will provide you with a very function Payroll Liabilities section on your Chart of Accounts.
Step 1 – Determine the required Payroll Liability Sub-Accounts
Open your Payroll Items List {Lists menu -> Payroll Items} and scroll to the bottom, and pay close attention to the items that are currently pointing to or assigned to Payroll Liabilities.
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NOTE: You may want to customize the columns that are displayed in this list. To do so, right-click the Liability Account heading -> choose customize columns -> from the available columns list click on Expense Account -> the Add button -> Liability Account -> the Add button -> Payable To -> and the Add button. Click Ok. This will provide you a more detailed and functional Payroll Item List to work with, as shown in the screenshot above.
From this list, we will determine what we need to add to our Chart of Accounts to make it more functional. We will be adding sub-accounts for:
- Federal Unemployment {FUTA}
- Federal Withholding {FWH}
- Medicare {M-CARE}
- Social Security {FICA}
- State Withholding {STWH}
- State Disability {SDI}
- State Unemployment {SUI}
- Employee Training Tax (ESD}
Step 2 – Create Payroll Liability Sub-Accounts
Once you have the list of items that we will be adding as sub-accounts to the main Payroll Liabilities account; go to your Chart of Accounts {Lists menu -> Chart of Accounts}.
- Click the Account button {at the lower left corner of this window} -> choose New -> click the radio button next to Other Account Types and from the drop down menu choose Other Current Liability -> click the Continue button
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- In the Account Name, type in Federal Unemployment -> click the box next to Subaccount of and then from the drop down menu choose Payroll Liabilities. Add other details as required or necessary.
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- Click the Save & New button to create the other items from your list.
NOTE: Create a single account for Social Security and Medicare.
Step 3 – Edit existing payroll items mapping them to the new accounts
Going back to your Payroll Item List, edit each item assigning them to the newly created sub-accounts.
- Click on the Federal Unemployment payroll item -> click the Payroll Item button -> choose Edit -> click the Next button -> from the Liability Account drop down menu -> choose Federal Unemployment
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- Click the Next button until you get to the last window then select Finish.
NOTE: You may receive an Update transactions with new account window, here you can choose to update all existing transactions OR update transactions starting on a specific date. My personal preference would be to update all existing transactions – you may want to consult your accountant about this.
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When you have finished mapping the items to your new sub-accounts; simply opening and viewing your Chart of Accounts will provide you with a detailed account of each of your payroll liabilities, as well as the grand total.
On Wednesday, we’ll provide instructions for making the Payroll Expenses section of your Chart of Accounts provide more information on Profit & Loss Reports.
