15Jun 2011 by Nancy Smyth

Creating a Job Cost Report With Hours Worked – QuickBooks Tip

Job Costing Tips, Payroll Tips, Reports
A QuickBooks tip for creating a job cost report that displays hours worked. Creating a job cost report displaying the hours worked by employee, on a specific job or on all jobs,  for a specific week or at the end of a job can provide a contractor with vital job costing information so you can see if you correctly bid the number of man hours required on a job. Luckily, QuickBooks will provide you with this information through the Time by Job Summary or Time by Job Detail Reports, this article will teach you how to modify the reports for your business needs, however, in order for these reports to be useful you must enter employee hours using the QuickBooks Enter Time function. The Time by Job Summary Report From…
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02May 2011 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks for Contractors Tip-Entering Job to Date Costs & Billing Data

Job Costing Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup
Contractors switching to QuickBooks from another accounting program are often concerned about how to enter Job to Date Costs and Billing Data when converting, so they don't loose this vital information. Below is a procedure that I found several years ago, unfortunately I don't remember where I found it or who wrote it (otherwise I would be happy to give them credit for it), but I do want to share it with you; as it is one way to handle this task. Use this procedure to enter Job-to-date (“JTD”) costs and JTD billing so the Job Profitability Summary is accurate after converting your existing accounting software to QuickBooks, when you convert your existing QuickBooks file to a new database file, or after archiving old QuickBooks transactions. Run your Job Profitability…
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12Nov 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks for Contractors-Freebie Friday Job Cost Equipment

Free & Fee-Based QuickBooks eBooks, Job Costing Tips
Each Friday, here on the QuickBooks for Contractors blog,  we will be offering a free or fee-based QuickBooks related eBook, offering tips, tricks, and training – so stayed tuned, visit often or sign up to have our posts delivered daily via email. As a contractor, determining the cost-per-hour for each piece of equipment or machinery  that your company owns and uses on a job site is a great tool for understanding, and even eventually, recouping the actual cost of the machine itself.   Once you have this information, you can improve the accuracy of your bidding, book equipment and machinery costs in your accounting software, and even identify ways in which you can maximize expenditures throughout the year. QuickBooks doesn't automatically have a way of job costing equipment, so this week…
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14Jul 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Job Costing – Determining Equipment Costs per Hour

Free & Fee-Based QuickBooks eBooks, Job Costing Tips
Determining the cost-per-hour for each piece of equipment or machinery  that your company owns and uses on a job site is a great tool for understanding, and even eventually, recouping the actual cost of the machine itself.  Once you have this information, you can improve the accuracy of your bidding, book equipment and machinery costs in your accounting software, and even identify ways in which you can maximize expenditures throughout the year. Equipment and machinery cost-per-hour rates are calculated by adding together three distinct pieces of information: What it costs to own or lease (acquisition cost-per-hour) What it costs to maintain (maintenance cost-per-hour) What it costs to run operate it (running time fuel consumption cost-per-hour) 1.  Calculating Acquisition cost-per-hour (ACPH) Formula:  Divide the total price paid (including interest paid) by…
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22Jun 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip – 5 Reasons To Use QuickBooks Group Items – Part 2

Customers & Accounts Receivable, Job Costing Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup
QuickBooks provides you with a powerful, and time saving tool within your items list, which is often under utilized and often misunderstood — the QuickBooks Group Item. 5 Reasons To Use QuickBooks Group Items: Creating and using Group Items is useful for quickly entering a group of individual items that you have already set up as single items in your Item List. Group Items are versatile – you can choose to print – or – not to print the items within the group, meaning you can track more detail than your customer needs to see. Group Items ensure that you don’t “leave something out” – which means lost dollars on your part. Group Items speed up the creation of Estimates and Invoices – imagine being able to pull in 19…
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21Jun 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tips – 5 Reasons to Use QuickBooks Group Items – Part 1

Customers & Accounts Receivable, Job Costing Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup
QuickBooks provides you with a powerful, and time saving tool within your items list, which is often under utilized and often misunderstood --- the QuickBooks Group Item. 5 Reasons To Use QuickBooks Group Items: Creating and using Group Items is useful for quickly entering a group of individual items that you have already set up as single items in your Item List. Group Items are versatile – you can choose to print – or – not to print the items within the group, meaning you can track more detail than your customer needs to see. Group Items ensure that you don’t “leave something out” – which means lost dollars on your part. Group Items speed up the creation of Estimates and Invoices – imagine being able to pull in 19…
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15Jun 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip – 12 Steps to Implement Job Costing

Job Costing Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup
It’s the start of construction season, is your job costing system in place? While the start of a busy construction season may not be the time to do a full-scale revamp of your current job costing system, it is certainly time to give it a thorough review for the upcoming season and perhaps make some modifications to your existing system within QuickBooks.  As you read through this article, take some notes and see what you can change now and what should wait until you are in “off season” before implementing. QuickBooks is a very flexible and versatile program.  The Customer Center List provides you with the ability to track your Customers (project owners, awarding authorities, or general contractors) that you perform work for.  For each Customer you can then track…
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10Jun 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip – Job Costing Starts With A Simple Item

Job Costing Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup
For many contractors job costing is a key part of the success of their business – how else will they know if they are actually making a profit on the jobs they are bidding on. Job costing in QuickBooks starts with the Item List.  When you tell this to most contractors they respond with “Items --- I don’t sell ITEMS --- what does Items have to do with construction????? This is a common feeling shared by many who use QuickBooks – not just contractors. What is an “Item”? By way of explanation, QuickBooks is a generic software program which can be used in any industry or business type; therefore, many of the terms in QuickBooks are generic and often confusing when trying to make it work in a specific industry. …
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08Jun 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip – Determing Cost of Goods Sold

Job Costing Tips, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup
Question: How do I determine the Cost of Goods Sold for an item? Answer: I tell my clients that Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is any cost incurred that directly relates to getting the sold goods out the door. I have them ask the question "Would you have this expense if you hadn't made the sale?" Typical examples of COGS are product purchased for resale, subcontractors or vendors you hire specifically for preparing a product for sale, shipping materials like packaging, freight costs of receiving the resale product and shipping the product to your customers, payroll/labor costs of your employees who are directly related to preparing the goods to be sold or shipped out (would you have hired them if you didn't have the product to sell?). Costs that are…
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21May 2010 by Nancy Smyth

Construction Accounting – Tracking Construction Costs Primer

Job Costing Tips
Tracking costs throughout a construction project is possibly the most important aspect of completing a project. This may seem like a simple function, but in a construction project, different entities need different financial information, and being able to track finances in real time saves a lot of work (and costs) later on. Let’s look at some of the costs and how accounting software fills the need. Construction accounting software makes it easier to keep track of direct material purchases.  Direct materials consist of basic building supplies like drywall, wire, pipes, and wood.  Essentially, direct materials are everything purchased for a project.  Sometimes these materials are purchased tax-free or with a builder’s discount.  These items are generally recorded separate of labor costs to ensure accurate profit and loss statements. The cost…
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