QuickBooks Tip – An Audit Trail for Accounts Receivable

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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