02Aug 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks for Contractors Tip – Advanced Progress Invoicing

Customers & Accounts Receivable
Progress Invoicing is a feature of QuickBooks® Pro, Premier and Enterprise editions, however, it is geared toward line item billing; more commonly used by contractors who work on large commercial and/or government construction projects involving a large scope of work or schedule of values and detailed line-item billing. Any contractor can run into a customer billing issue when attempting to utilize detailed job costing in conjunction with QuickBooks Progress Invoicing. A contractor will have to enter detailed information about labor, materials, subcontracts and other costs in the Estimate or Schedule of Values form in order to get an accurate Estimate vs. Actual report from QuickBooks. An issue often will arise when the contractor bills his customer using a percentage of a Lump Sum Draw, rather than a percentage of completion…
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30Jul 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks for Contractors Tip – Basics of Progress Invoicing

Customers & Accounts Receivable
Progress Invoicing is a standard feature of QuickBooks® Pro, Premier, and Enterprise editions; each of these versions also offer several options for invoicing as well.  In order to implement the Progress Invoicing function you must also utilize the QuickBooks Estimate function – this will eliminate repetitive data entry and help you achieve good job costing reports, such as Estimate vs. Actual reports. To activate Progress billing you MUST first log into QuickBooks as the QuickBooks Administrator and be in single-user mode.  From the Edit menu -> choose Preferences -> scroll down to Jobs & Estimate -> and click on the Company Preferences tab.  Once you are in the Company Preferences tab, review and set the options as follows: Do You Create Estimates – should be set to Yes Do You…
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29Jul 2010 by Nancy Smyth

An Introduction to Progress Invoicing

Customers & Accounts Receivable, The "Sunburst" Website
Progress Invoicing (also called progress billing, percentage of completion billing, or partial billing) involves billing from an estimate (or Schedule of Values) over the course of time and could be considered a type of installment billing.  Progress billing is commonly associated with the construction industry; however, it is common in other industries as well. QuickBooks® Pro, Premier, and Enterprise editions all offer several options for invoicing and a Progress Invoicing function is also available. Some projects or jobs will require only a single invoice, others will require two invoices, others may require three invoices (one at the start of the job, one when you are 50% done, and the other when you are finished), other projects might require that you submit monthly progress invoices over the course of months or…
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28Jul 2010 by Nancy Smyth

Certified Payroll & AIA Billing Updates

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Customers & Accounts Receivable, The "Sunburst" Website
We've been testing, debugging, and documenting numerous certified payroll and AIA billing updates for the last few weeks - I've posted some of the information behind the changes here in our blog. Today, I just send out a newsletter to over 2,000 construction companies (in all 50 states) who use our software - Glad I use Constant Contact to keep everyone up to date, otherwise they would get me for spamming :-) Below are highlights from the newsletter. Certified Payroll Solution Updates: There are several new enhancements, changes, and requirements available for Certified Payroll Solution; some at the State level for certified payroll reporting and others at the Federal level for EEOC Reporting - each item has a link to our website where you will find complete instructions.  Be sure…
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15Jul 2010 by Nancy Smyth

It’s Best to Leave Your PC Running 24/7 – True or False

Be A Better Bookkeeper, New Technology
This is something that has plagued me for years - should I leave my computer running all the time or not. It is also a topic that has caused much debate. Leave your PC running 24/7 Some people say that it's better to leave your PC running around the clock than to shut it off at night and then boot it up in the morning.  The reasoning behind this side of the story, is that if you never shut down your computer you will save wear and tear on it components and, therefore, extend the life of your machine. Shut if off and boot it up in the morning Others say that if you care at all about energy consumption (electricity is expensive after all) and how big of a…
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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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13Jul 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tips – Four (4) Ways to Add Long Disclaimers on Forms

Customers & Accounts Receivable
As a business owner  there can be several different situations that you encounter where you might need to include a long legal disclaimer or explanation when you sell a specific item, offer special discounts, provide warranty disclaimers and  information or explain your payment requirements when bidding on a job or even invoicing a customer. There are four different methods for addressing this issue; the one that you choose will depend on what makes the most sense for your business: ItemsTemplateLetters FunctionOutside of QuickBooks   Using Items to add long disclaimers – If the additional information needs to be included when a specific product is sold, that information can be included in the description OR you can create a new item with a zero sales cost for the purpose of adding…
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30Jun 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tips – Posting Transactions – Date Sensitivity

Be A Better Bookkeeper
QuickBooks automatically prefills the date field in every transaction you create (Enter Bill, Write Checks, Create Estimate, etc.) and report that you generate.  You should always verify that the date specified by QuickBooks is the correct date for the particular transaction or report. In many cases, the date that QuickBooks provides you with is not the correct date that you need.  Additionally, you should verify that you are not posting transactions to a date in a period that has been "closed".  Unfortunately, QuickBooks allows users to post new transactions to a prior period if they have access to change or delete transactions recorded before the closing date. Report Dates Every QuickBooks report automatically specifies a default date range each time the report is created. You should always verify that the…
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29Jun 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip – Construction A/P – Tracking Subcontractor Insurance

Free & Fee-Based QuickBooks eBooks, Questions from our readers, Vendors & Accounts Payable
A reader wrote to ask the following question: I have a vendor (subcontractor) whose general liability insurance expired.  In QuickBooks I was able to produce a check for them.  How do I QuickBooks to notify me that their insurance has expired? Answer: Unlike some of the more costly construction specific software programs out there, QuickBooks wasn't designed to prevent us from generating a check to a Vendor/Subcontractor whose General Liability or Worker's Compensation insurance has expired. The QuickBooks Premier (or Enterprise) Contractor edition does have a "section" in the Additional Info tab of the Vendor Record where you can enter an expiration date for both Worker's Comp and General Liability insurance - and if you enter dates in these fields you will get a warning when using a vendor whose…
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28Jun 2010 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip – Accounts Payable – Vendor Bill Approvals

Questions from our readers, Vendors & Accounts Payable
A reader asked the following question: Do you know of a good method for indicating or tracking that a vendor bill is approved for payment? Answer: Technically, the bill should be approved before it is input into QuickBooks; and generally indicating on the front or face of the document/purchase order/voucher/vendor invoice or whatever you happen to call it, is usually the relied upon method. 1.  Purchasing inexpensive “custom printed stamps” is probably one of the easiest ways in which to start the process. When ordering custom made stamps you can include lines with places for accounting to approve the document signifying that the invoice had all pertinent documentation attached, that the dollar amounts matched, and the date that the invoice was received. Be sure that there is another line or…
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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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