QuickBooks Tip: Prior Amount Totals for Invoicing from Estimates

A QuickBooks tip for getting prior amount billed totals to appear when creating Progress Invoices from an Estimate; when you’ve either had to start a new QuickBooks company file or you are switching from another accounting software.

I’m trying to get my JTD beginning balances to appear in the “Prior Amount” totals prior to preparing my first invoice.  I used your “To enter the JTD billing for each job” information to create JTD prior invoicing amounts.  When I create a new invoice there were no prior amounts or percentages shown on my progress invoice.  When I create an invoice stating the percent to bill, it calculates my percentage based on the estimate amount only–No JTD amounts show up.  I did create an invoice with a dollar amount and saved it.  When I went to create a new invoice that amount appeared in the prior amount, but no prior balances.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks, Pam

Hi Pam

Setting up a new QuickBooks file sure is a lot of work isn’t it?

There are two posts on our blog that discuss the procedure that you mention, Entering Job-to-Date Costs & Billing Data at the Item Level and Entering Job to Date Costs & Billing Data – I wish I knew exactly which article that you are referring to.  While, both of these are good articles (written by Lorien Prince, who is a CPA and Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor), they do have their drawbacks – like any work around.

Both of the articles provide you with a way to create Journal Entries to bring that information into your Job Profitability Reports, unfortunately Journal Entries do not impact QuickBooks forms; such as Progress Invoicing based on an Estimate.

My advice would be:

1. Make sure that your reports in your new QuickBooks file match the reports from your old file (or old accounting system) by running a Profit & Loss by Job and any other reports that you are interested in to be sure that the numbers match.
2. Make a backup of your QuickBooks data file.
3. Pick one job – preferably the smallest and least complicated one.
4. Create an Estimate for the FULL amount, including any change orders – the Estimate Date should be the ORIGINAL Date of the Estimate.

Now comes the really tricky part …… which makes providing answers such as this VERY difficult because I can’t see your file, how you did things, and I don’t know where you are in the whole conversion process.

The first thing that you want to address is HOW did you record open (unpaid) invoices for this job?  Or have you gotten that far?

If you have NO open (unpaid) invoices for this job, you can:

1. Create a single Progress Invoice from the Estimate for the total amount billed and paid up to the date of the conversion (the Progress Invoice date should be your last billing date).
2. Save the Progress Invoice – then pull the invoice back up so you are viewing it on your screen – from the Edit menu -> choose Mark Invoice as Pending.  This removes previously billed amounts but does NOT send the invoice to Accounts Receivable.
3. Run your reports again and verify that nothing has changed in the totals for this job.
4. If everything is good, you can repeat this procedure for your other jobs and when you are ready to do the current months billing the prior amounts billed should be displayed in your Progress Invoice.

Really, I would suggest that you contact a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, who is well versed in the construction industry to help you with this, as there are many steps and “it depends” when setting up a new file.  No two contractors want the same level of detail and while I can provide general tips there are always special situations that can be encountered.

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