Be A Better Bookkeeper | QuickBooks for Contractors blog

02Jan 2017 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks – Print function disabled for W2’s, 1099’s, etc.

Meeting an earlier W-2 and 1099 deadline (now January 31, 2017) just got a little more complicated and time-consuming. A recent QuickBooks payroll update has disabled the print function for W's, 1099's, 941's, 940's, and other year-end payroll tax returns. NOTE: I'm pretty certain it was a payroll update and not a normal QuickBooks maintenance release that did this - mainly because I have not installed the most recent maintenance release so that should not be the cause. First the really bad news. If you planned on printing your W-'s on pre-printed forms - forget about it. If you need to export W-2 and 1099 information to a 3rd party (such as Mag-Filer) - forget about it - as the Print to Text export has also been disabled. Now for…

19Mar 2015 by Nancy Smyth

Tips for Effectively Using QuickBooks Purchase Orders

Job Costing Tips, Vendors & Accounts Payable

Using Purchase Orders and running the Open Purchase Orders by Job report in QuickBooks are excellent tools for General Contractors as well as Subcontractors who sub out a portion of the job to someone else. Purchase Orders can also be customized and used to record a verbal bid for materials from a supplier as well as using them to create an Invitation to Bid, which will ultimately be sent to several subcontractors at once. Using Purchase Orders in QuickBooks can help you to ensure that your Subcontractors or Material Suppliers do not charge you more than what they originally quoted you for a price and the Open Purchase Order by Job Report can help you to see how much in committed costs there are left on your jobs. Both very…

10Dec 2014 by Nancy Smyth

The Great Debate – QuickBooks Desktop vs. QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Corner

There seems to be an incredible debate going on between QuickBooks Desktop vs QuickBooks Online; and it’s really beginning to bug the heck out of me. Let’s start at the top, with Intuit. If you visit the Intuit QuickBooks website at https://quickbooks.intuit.com/ what you see advertised is the QuickBooks Online version and unless scroll all the way to the bottom of that page and look under the Products column, you don’t see the desktop versions of QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, QuickBooks Accountant or even the QuickBooks for the Mac versions! Everything on that page points you to the “all-new QuickBooks” which is the QuickBooks Online product. [caption id="attachment_5316" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Right click to enlarge this image[/caption] The same goes with Payroll, it’s almost impossible to find information…

19Sep 2014 by Nancy Smyth

“Overstating” the Importance of Cost Reporting-Free Webinar

Be A Better Bookkeeper, Webinars & Training

"Overstating" the importance of cost reporting is a free 1 hour webinar, to be held on Wednesday September 24, 2014 from 2 to 3 EST. Register now to reserve your seat! Kimberly Shannon, Shamese Shular and myself are teaming up once again to offer another free webinar. In this webinar, "Overstating" the Importance of Cost Reporting, we will be discussing how business owners rely on accurate, timely, and relevant status reports from their management team in order to make key decisions. Procedures for project controls and record keeping become indispensable tools to managers and other participants in the process. However, cost reporting is often inadequate for this purpose because there may be too much or too little information; or data may be misrepresented, incomplete, unrecognized, not validated, or simply inaccurate.…

05Sep 2014 by Roxanne Brown

How do Amazon Merchants Reconcile in QuickBooks? Webinar

From Our Guest Bloggers, QuickBooks Corner

One of the biggest struggles for merchants that sell on Amazon Seller Central; or participate in Amazon FBA is how to reconcile their orders with the payments received. Amazon pays their merchants either weekly, bi-weekly, or in some rare cases daily. The majority of merchants I work with are paid bi-weekly or weekly. They also combine all types of payments in your settlement; making it almost impossible to truly see the details behind Seller Central versus FBA sales. I can’t stress how important it is to understand what’s going on with your Amazon accounts; however it’s definitely not an easy task – until now. Many merchants take it on faith that they are getting paid for everything and they try their best to understand what is selling and how profitable…

06May 2014 by Nancy Smyth

Is Managing QuickBooks Purchase Orders Driving You Insane?

Questions from our readers, Vendors & Accounts Payable

Implementing the QuickBooks Purchase Order function can speed up data entry and ensure accurate job costing, because you don’t have to worry if you are selecting the correct cost code from the QuickBooks Item List; BUT knowing which Purchase Order belongs to which Vendor Bill can be quite a task – see this question from a reader. Hi, We are a growing construction business and we have recently starting creating Purchase Orders to our Subcontractors and Materials Suppliers from our QuickBooks Estimates – this feature works great and I love it. It makes data entry so much easier and allows us to easily see if our costs are increasing without our knowledge. We have one vendor that we buy the majority of our materials from, so we have a lot…

22Jan 2014 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip: How to find “Notes” after an Upgrade

Questions from our readers, QuickBooks 2013 - What's New?, QuickBooks Tips & Tricks

A reader asked how to find notes after a recent QuickBooks upgrade. In earlier versions of QuickBooks, I kept employee notes of hiring, pay raises, etc in their files , either under notes or another field in their personal files (where payroll, addresses, etc were kept). Where do i find them now? or are they lost? Many thanks - Bill ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Bill Thanks for dropping by and submitting a question :-) I have to admit that the first time that I opened a QuickBooks 2013 or 2014 file (after having used QuickBooks for years) that at first I thought all of my notes were lost as well. Any employee notes that you kept in QuickBooks 2012 or earlier - that used to appear in the employee record as…

10Jan 2014 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip: How to Calculate Over/Under Billings

Job Costing Tips, Reports

The construction industry often requires that your financial statements be based on Percentage of Completion accounting practices - where you recognize revenue progressively throughout the life of the job. The Percentage of Completion is determined by dividing the costs to date over the current budget (Estimate). The current budget is defined as the original budget (Estimate) plus any approved change orders. An adjustment to the financials for overstated/understated revenue must then happen, because customer monies are often collected in advance of the work in job costing, you’ll want to state the true revenue on the financials carefully. Accounting guidelines recommend that you make your percentage of completion calculations based on Revenue Earned = (Total Costs to Date / Current Project Budget) x Current Customer Contract Sales Price. In reality, you…

11Dec 2013 by BruceMc

Employee Reimbursements-Accountable vs Non-Accountable Plans

Be A Better Bookkeeper, From Our Guest Bloggers, IRS Information, Payroll Tips

As a tax preparer and payroll provider for my clients I always recommend, whenever possible, that they keep employee reimbursements’ out of payroll. The IRS even suggest this in Publication 583 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p583.pdf). If it is your habit to include reimbursed expenses in employee paychecks and your payroll is ever audited, be it from the IRS or the State, I am sure you and your employer could be very unhappy. In a perfect world, all expenses would be paid with company checks, or credit cards, leaving a clear path for accounting to identify the source and business reason for each expense. However, we do not live in a perfect world, and it is oftentimes necessary for employees to pay for these expenses. Reimbursements are not so cut and dry. If you…

04Dec 2013 by Nancy Smyth

Q & A: QuickBooks Employee Payroll Reimbursements & Job Costing

Job Costing Tips, Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers

Job costing employee payroll reimbursements in QuickBooks is a function that many users want to perform and they usually expect that they can - with less than desired results. Below is a question that I answered several years ago on the Intuit Community forum. How do I link a employee payroll reimbursement to a customer's job? For example: If an employee pays for something with a personal credit card and I reimburse him via payroll, how do I get that transaction to link to a customer's job so it shows up in the Job Costs Detail report? When I reimburse an employee, for example, the debit shows up on my P&L under say, Landscape Materials, but how do I get that cost over to the job so I can see…

26Nov 2013 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks at Year-End: Getting Ready for 1099’s

1099"s, Payroll Tips, Reports, Vendors & Accounts Payable

Here we are almost at year end and one of the tasks that we will soon be faced with in QuickBooks is getting ready to issue 1099's. According to the IRS, business owners must file Form 1099-MISC for each person to whom you have paid at least $10.00 in royalties or broker payments in lieu of dividends or tax-exempt interest; at least $600 in rents, services (including parts and materials), prizes and awards, other income payments, medical and health care payments, crop insurance proceeds, cash payments for fish (or other aquatic life) you purchase from anyone engaged in the trade or business of catching fish, or, generally, the cash paid from a notional principal contract to an individual, partnership, or estate; any fishing boat proceeds, or gross proceeds of $600,…

21Nov 2013 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Year-End Tip – Tracking 1099 & W-9 Information

1099"s, IRS Information, Payroll Tips, Reports, Vendors & Accounts Payable

Every vendor record in QuickBooks provides you with a place to indicate if a Vendor is eligible for a 1099 and a spot for you to enter the Vendors tax ID number and I highly recommend that you utilize this functionality along with the ability to attach a completed W-9 to the Vendor record. You can enter this information by going to the Vendor Center, selecting and editing a Vendor record. Exactly where you enter this information will depend on what "year" version of QuickBooks you are using, I've included a couple of examples below to help point you in the right direction. [caption id="attachment_4362" align="aligncenter" width="300"] In QuickBooks 2012 - you'll enter 1099 information in the Additional Info tab.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4363" align="aligncenter" width="300"] In QuickBooks 2014 you'll enter Vendor…

19Nov 2013 by Nancy Smyth

Cleaning Up Your QuickBooks File at Year End

QuickBooks Tips & Tricks

Are you in the habit of cleaning up your QuickBooks file at year end? If not, it's a good habit to get into as few of us ever think about including our QuickBooks file when we think of year-end cleanup. If you’ve been using QuickBooks for any length of time (like I have) or inherited the company QuickBooks file from one or more previous bookkeepers, I’m betting that your QuickBooks Lists are just full of “things” that are no longer used. Let’s go take a look shall we? Let’s start with your Chart of Accounts: Can you still see that checking account listed there that you (or someone else) closed a year or two ago? Do you see an account used for the same thing but listed with several different…

25Oct 2013 by Nancy Smyth

How To Create a Payroll Deduction Authorization Form Using the QuickBooks Letters function

Payroll Tips, QuickBooks Tips & Tricks

Payroll deduction authorization forms should be completed, signed and kept on file for each employee who has money taken out of his/her paycheck for anything other than permissible withholding taxes. Yes, it's more paperwork and yet another task that an already busy payroll clerk needs to perform - BUT - QuickBooks can help you automate this task by using the tools that are built right into the program! On Tuesday, we posted an article about Recording & Tracking Employee Personal Tool Purchases made on company credit cards or lines of credit with company vendors. In that blog post, the person who asked the question indicated that sometimes the workers purchased tools on the company American Express card and would write TOC for “Take Out of Check” on the receipt -…

22Oct 2013 by Nancy Smyth

Recording & Tracking Employee Personal Tool Purchases

Customers & Accounts Receivable, Payroll Tips, Vendors & Accounts Payable

This question came up on a discussion list that I belong to over the weekend and I thought "hey, what a great blog post and how to tip this would make"! So here goes! I am bookkeeper for a construction company. Sometimes the workers purchase tools on the company American Express card and write TOC for "Take Out of Check" on the receipt. There are oftentimes material expenses for the company on the same receipt. How do I record this? What they did before was to subtract the amount from the gross wages when called into ADP, so it's kind of a pay advance. But don't advances require the taxes to be taken out? Should I get check breakdown and subtract from net wages instead or treat as a loan?…

Category: Be A Better Bookkeeper