Job Costing Tips
Money doesn’t grow on trees and neither does your profit on a construction project!
QuickBooks® can provide you with some good job costing reports, the Estimate vs. Actual is one of my personal favorites, BUT QuickBooks needs to be setup correctly and job costing information needs to be entered consistently.
Remember … Garbage in (to QuickBooks®) — equals garbage out (of QuickBooks® reports).
This section provides you with helpful tips to make the job costing capabilities in QuickBooks® work for you.
Tips for Effectively Using QuickBooks Purchase Orders
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 valuable pieces of information.
Having said that, you do have to use the QuickBooks Purchase Order function correctly and there are several pitfalls that can happen, that you will want to avoid.
This post provides you with tips for effectively using QuickBooks Purchase Orders as well as entering Bills against those Purchase Orders.
Continue readingQuickBooks Tip: How to Calculate Over/Under Billings
- You create an Estimate for EVERY job/project
- You've modified the QuickBooks Estimate Template to include Cost and Markup columns and you utilize those columns when building your Estimate
- All of your "Items" have been set-up to capture BOTH revenue and costs (double-sided items)
- You enter ALL job related employee time and vendor costs using double-sided items
- You create Job Types for Over/Under and Completed (with sub-types for years) and assign them correctly to your jobs
Q & A: QuickBooks Employee Payroll Reimbursements & Job Costing
Automating Job Costing Overtime, an 800 pound gorilla with an attitude
Calculating and distributing employee overtime is a burdensome process that many business owners and payroll administrators have to deal with on a weekly basis. Everyone has a different opinion on just "HOW" that overtime is to be calculated and distributed. By everyone, I mean the business owner, the payroll clerk, heck even the Federal and State government. No wonder it's just a problematic situation!
Continue readingJob Costing Payroll When Using a Payroll Service
Using an outside payroll service, such as Paychecx or ADP, is a popular option for many business owners. While using a payroll service often provides many benefits one of the biggest challenges or drawbacks is for the company that needs job costing. See this question submitted by a reader.
My company uses a 3rd party to do all of our payroll. We receive an itemized report back showing what we spent for the week. I am having trouble trying to get this information charged out to individual jobs. I track all of the hours separately in Excel, with estimated costs. How can I job cost this information?
Continue readingTracking Timesheet Hours vs Hours Invoiced
A reader asks - I'm looking for a report so I can compare hours reported via the timesheet or really hours that have been paid out Vs. the hours that have been paid for or Invoiced.
See what reports we've suggested.
Continue readingCSI Masterformat Contractor Item List
The CSI (Construction Specifications Institute) MasterFormat contractor item list is a standard item list used for most commercial building design and construction projects in North America. It lists titles and section numbers for organizing data about construction requirements, products, and activities. The latest version, revised in April 2012, contains 48 main categories or divisions. Two readers have asked questions recently about the CSI MasterFormat list - here's what they had to say.
Continue readingBreaking Down Payroll by Job, Phase and Cost Code
Breaking down payroll by job, phase, and cost code is something that I'm often asked about by the construction clients/customers that I work with. Construction payroll is probably one of the more complex payrolls that anyone can encounter, see this question submitted by a reader - and my suggestion on how to resolve this.
Continue readingPayroll for Work Hours & Drive Time Invoicing Problem
Entering payroll for normal employee work hours and drive time and passing only the work hours through to client invoices is not only important but confusing. The following question was submitted by a reader who pays from the start of the first job till the end of the last job of the day (not including lunch break). I have my employees fill out a time tracker sheet each day that shows the time started at the first job till the end, drive time in between jobs, so on and so forth. I enter this into QuickBooks but I can't figure out where to enter in drive time to pay the girls their hourly wage on payroll but to not invoice anyone for drive time.
Continue readingEntering Bills or Checks in QuickBooks – Items vs. Expenses
QuickBooks Tip: How To Create a Summary Invoice for Customers
Estimates vs. Purchase Orders: What’s the difference?
QuickBooks Weekly Timesheet – Service vs. Payroll Item
Creating Estimates In Excel vs. QuickBooks – What’s the Difference?
Create a QuickBooks Job Cost Report With Hours & Payroll Costs
Nancy Smyth, Sunburst Software Solutions, Inc.QuickBooks Construction & Payroll Expert
I've been using and supporting QuickBooks products since the early 1990's. I've worked with thousands of contractors, assisting them with QuickBooks setup, Certified Payroll Reporting requirements, AIA Billing and Weighted-Average Overtime.
QuickBooks is a powerful product, but learning how to use it in your construction business can be difficult. I hope you find resources available here to be helpful.
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