Employee education and training is an investment that every business owner should make. As a business owner, your company policies should include employee education and training requirements.
Whether you are a business owner or an employee, education and training is part of your daily life – like it or not. We need it in order to deal with new complexities that we face at work, for career advancement, and to obtain certification.
Being a business owner myself, I find myself learning new things on a daily basis in order to make my job easier and more efficient. For example, right now as I prepare this blog post, I’m working with a new piece of software called Dragon Naturally Speaking. Dragon allows me to dictate my blog post instead of physically having to type it. Needless to say, this is a learning experience. But once I master it, creating a blog post is going to be a much faster and more efficient process. I will also then be able to apply this knowledge to other tasks, such as writing or updating our software manuals.
My own background is bookkeeping. Over the years I’ve transitioned from being just a bookkeeper to becoming a software developer. I’ve learned a whole bunch in this job! Performing bookkeeping tasks or providing QuickBooks training to clients did not prepare me for becoming a software developer, writing manuals, creating and maintaining a website, or any of the thousands of other things that I do on a daily basis.
Let’s take support for an example. I find that there is a very, very fine line between how people view support and training. In general, support is defined as helping a user solve a specific problem with the product, perhaps resolving an error message. However, I find that most people define or expect that support includes (or is also) training – not only for our software but for QuickBooks, Microsoft Office, and basic computer tasks such as how to create a new folder or add an attachment to an email.
Whether you are a contractor, a bookkeeper working for contractor, or certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor you need to make a commitment to yourself, to your employees, to your business, and to your clients to obtain the training necessary to perform daily tasks quickly and efficiently and then take what you have learned an apply it. This requires a commitment of your time and sometimes money as well
Training can be obtained in multiple ways. The internet provides some great training opportunities, you can Google something specific and find an overwhelming amount of information for free. Many companies, our own included, provide great training videos for learning their software – free of charge. You can take a class on-line or go to your local community college.
The possibilities are endless for learning, if you just make the commitment.
I hope you found this article to be helpful, if so, please take a moment to leave a comment or share it on your favorite social media site.
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!
It’s our last official post for 2011 and we’d like to wish you all the happiest of holidays and say a warm “thank you” for your support and patronage this past year!
Seasons Greetings and Happy Holidays to all of you! I hope each and every one of you have a fantastic holiday season.
I’d like to thank everyone for your support of the QuickBooks for Contractors blog during the past year.
Our office will be closed from Friday, December 23 through Monday, December 26 and again from Friday, December 30 through Monday, January 2, 2012; while we share the holiday season with friends and family.
During this time were also going to do some well deserved maintenance and updates to our main website to prepare for 2012.
When we relaunch on Tuesday January 3, 2012, you’ll find that we’ve been very busy during this time. The Federal WH 347, certified payroll report is due to expire on December 31 and we will be providing information about the new reporting requirements so that you’ll be up to date. Additionally, after a very long delay, the Compliance Monitoring Unit, part of the California Department of Industrial Relations, will go into effect. So there will be information available about this as well.
In addition to these prevailing wage law changes you’ll find that we’ve been busy updating and creating new QuickBooks training materials geared for commercial and government construction contractors. These new materials will be in the form of e-books, pre-recorded videos and live webinars. All which will be reasonably priced.
Until then, have a safe and happy holiday season and be sure to check back next year to see what we’ve been up to!
An “audit trail” for Accounts Receivable in QuickBooks is only one of the many complexities faced by government construction contractors. Running any sort of construction business can be difficult – but the amount of paperwork, the level of detail, and the additional requirements for a government contractor can cause 2 and sometimes 3 times the amount for a bookkeeper. Below is a question submitted by a reader named Shirley.
We are a Construction Company and do government contracting. Is it possible to use the Accounts Receivable Summary to track each Project and the invoices when received and when paid. It has been several years since I have used QuickBooks and have never used the Construction Version. We have QuickBooks 2011 Premier Construction.
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First, let me say that the Contractor version doesn’t work any differently than the Pro – it just has some built-in construction specific reports and other features that aren’t available in other versions. So your learning curve shouldn’t be difficult at all! That’s the good news 
As for using the Accounts Receivable Summary Report as an audit trail, personally I don’t think I would use that because it wouldn’t give me the detail that I would want – OR – that I “think” you are looking for. The A/R Summary report only shows you how much {total} money is overdue in 30, 60, and 90 day increments. This information may meet your needs if you just need to know how much money is how many days overdue by job.
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My own personal preference, would be to know which invoices were how many days past due; therefore, I would rather run the Accounts Receivable Aging Detail to determine exactly which invoices where outstanding.
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Both of these reports would provide me with information about just a specific job – each could be modified and filtered for a specific job or jobs.
Another very good report, especially if you are concerned about a specific job, is the Customer Open Balance Report {available from the actual QuickBooks job record and choosing Open Balance}.
Another alternative to obtain this information easily, without running and printing reports – would be to customize how job record information is displayed in QuickBook, that way anyone who has access to this type of information can easily see it without having to run, print, and then distribute reports. Remember, it’s all about efficiency and streamlining the workload/work flow. Customizing how information is displayed in the job record let’s you quickly see how much total money is outstanding for a specific job, when invoices were created {dated}, the date you anticipate receiving the money, how many days outstanding the money is, what the invoice was issued for and the open balance.
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For tracking Vendor costs you could run a Job Cost by Job and Vendor Detail, click the Modify Report button and customize it like the screenshot below:
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QuickBooks can do many things, including provide you with an “audit trail” for Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. You just have to get in there an poke around and see what works for you.
While the information provided about may not answer the original question to the 100% satisfaction of the person asking it, based on the information provided it should at least provide you with things to look at and modify to best meet your needs.
If you found this tip to be helpful, please take a moment to leave a comment or share it on your favorite social network.
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.
