Questions from our readers | QuickBooks for Contractors blog

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…

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…

23Sep 2013 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks 2014 is available, when should I upgrade – Q & A

Questions from our readers, QuickBooks 2014 - What's New?

QuickBooks 2014 can be purchased beginning today (from what I've heard) directly from Inuit websites or through Authorized Intuit Affiliate links – however, it won’t be in stores until the middle of October. Many companies will want to upgrade right away - some of you may already have access to the new version. It seems that each year when Intuit announces a new version of QuickBooks, I’m overwhelmed with phone calls and emails from clients and customers asking a multitude of questions about the new version. Here is a list of do’s, don’ts and frequent questions. Frequently Asked Questions: Should I/Do I NEED to upgrade to QuickBooks 2014? I’m usually very conservative in regards to this question, especially the last few years with money being so tight for everyone, but…

04Jun 2013 by Nancy Smyth

Certified Payroll-Numbering and “No Work” Performed Reports

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Questions from our readers

Certified Payroll numbering and the submission of "No Work" performed reports should be easy to figure out, but the way that the instructions provided on the U.S. Department of Labor website are written is very confusing - see this question submitted by a reader. Our company is fairly new to working on Prevailing Wage jobs and submitting certified payroll reports and I'm so confused about the requirements for numbering the reports and the submission of "No Work Performed" payrolls. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) website states payrolls must be submitted sequentially and should be based on the weeks worked under a contract but the instructions also states submit for no work week. Can you tell me which is correct? Thanks, Pamela ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Pamela Thanks for stopping by and…

18Apr 2013 by Nancy Smyth

Entering Historical Paychecks – Payroll Taxes and the Accounts They Post To

Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

Setting up QuickBooks payroll and entering historical information can be quite confusing. Thankfully there is a Payroll Setup wizard that will help you through most of the really rough parts. I am entering historical payroll from 2012. Our fiscal year began 10/1/12. It is now 4/12/13. How is best way to enter this payroll and balance month by month until I get to the current info. Also, I am confused on what accounts the payroll taxes post to. I'm not sure I have them set up at this point. Especially on the exact accounts I need for payroll taxes and are they debits or credits. and how do I link them to my chart of accounts. Any help would be appreciated. Debbie Hi Debbie If you are entering historical payroll…

18Mar 2013 by Nancy Smyth

How-to Customize a Report – One Employee for All Jobs Worked

Questions from our readers, QuickBooks Corner

Customizing reports in QuickBooks is often a huge source of frustration for users. Here's a great example of just how frustrating it can be. This question was submitted by a reader of our blog. I am going insane with the lack of source name available for filter. I want to specifically target ONE employee for ALL jobs worked in a particular time period. H-E-L-P For the life of me I cannot understand why source name is a foundation for reports yet not available as a selected filter. Thank you - Sam Hi Sam Source Name is only available in certain QuickBooks Reports - which I agree can be quite frustrating, to say the least. I think that I would approach creating the report that you need, that targets one specific…

07Nov 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Job Costing Payroll When Using a Payroll Service

Job Costing Tips, Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

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? Thank you – Michelle Hi Michelle I bet you are having trouble getting payroll information charged to individual jobs, that’s one of the…

28Aug 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Tracking Timesheet Hours vs Hours Invoiced

Job Costing Tips, Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers, Reports

Tracking timesheet hours vs hours invoiced is crucial for a companies cash flow. See this question submitted by a reader. Hello Experts, 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. I've also noticed it is possible to add time to timesheets that have already been billed. Is there a way to prevent this? Thanks for your time and energy. Brian Hello Brian Thanks for stopping by and submitting a question. QuickBooks has some good time tracking reports, here are my recommendations for some reports for you to look at. The Time by Job Detail Report is available in all versions/flavors (Pro, Premier, Enterprise); access it from…

16Aug 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Billing Employee Time to Customers

Be A Better Bookkeeper, Customers & Accounts Receivable, Questions from our readers, Reports

Billing employee time on customer invoices is something that many business need to do - not just contractors who perform Time & Materials Billing. Making sure that you bill all of the time your employee(s) have spent working on specific jobs or tasks for customers is crucial and depends data that you've entered in QuickBooks. Here's a question from a reader. Hi Nancy- Thanks for the tips. I'm used to using the "Unbilled costs by job" report, however I am stumped when it comes to billable hours I've entered using the timesheet function. How do I tell if I need to create an invoice for a client to bill them for hours entered? Those hours do not show up on the "Unbilled costs by job report" !! Any help would…

13Aug 2012 by Nancy Smyth

CSI Masterformat Contractor Item List

Customers & Accounts Receivable, Job Costing Tips, Questions from our readers, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

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. Is there anyway that QuickBooks has the MasterFormat codes already on the system? We are looking to start using the codes, but not sure if we have to enter them all ourselves or if there is a way to just find them on QuickBooks online. Thank you. Drew Hi, I need to know how to turn on the…

09Aug 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Reporting Fringe Benefits Paid in Cash on Certified Payroll

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers, The "Sunburst" Website, Webinars & Training

Reporting prevailing wage fringe benefits paid in cash to the employee has specific requirements when completing the Federal WH-347 Certified Payroll Report. Here is a question from a reader who is submitting the built-in QuickBooks certified payroll report and is being told that she is not correctly reporting the cash fringe benefit amounts. Hi, I found your blog through a Google search and can't believe all the information you have here about certified payroll, prevailing wage and using QuickBooks - so far I've learned so much! I could really use some help and couldn't find anything that I thought fit our specific situation. We are a non-union contractor working on prevailing wage jobs and we pay the full fringe benefit amount to the employee in cash. We use the QuickBooks…

23Jul 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Wage Restitution and Certified Payroll Revisions

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers

Wage restitution and certified payroll revisions happen when you miss an update to the wage determination which increases the prevailing wage rate and the fringe benefit rate or perhaps you weren't informed until after working on the project for several weeks/months that this project was subject to prevailing wage. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of clear guidelines for submitting revised certified payroll reports, however, I've had experience in following two different sets of requirements. See this question submitted by a reader. My question is, if a subcontractor pays restitution for an employee(s), do they have to send the same Certified Payroll Reports back with revision on top? Or will they have to send a separate Certified Payroll Report with the dates they were owed restitution stating the dates they…

17Jul 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Recording Transactions in QuickBooks

Be A Better Bookkeeper, Questions from our readers

Recording transactions in QuickBooks can sometimes cause a lot of confusion. See this question submitted by a reader. Hi, I'm fairly new to using QuickBooks and while I understand how to record most normal transactions by writing checks, paying bills, and entering credit card transactions, etc., I'm sort of stumped on how to record payments that I make online. For example, I log into the website of our credit card company and make the credit card payment there and I log into the EFTPS site to pay our payroll liabilities; how do I record these transactions in QuickBooks - because I'm not really writing a check if you follow me. Another thing that stumps me is how to record petty cash expenditures, we have cash that we keep in…

07Jun 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Creating a Simple Invoice for Taxable & Non-Taxable Items

Customers & Accounts Receivable, Questions from our readers, Sales Tax Tracking

Creating a simple invoice for taxable and non-taxable items, that the customer can easily understand - while allowing you to track your Sales Tax Liability often causes a quandary for QuickBooks users. The following question, submitted by a reader, is a perfect example of just how difficult this situation can sometimes be. Hi, We are curious if there is a way to do this: We do cable Runs and would like to quote our customers $150.00/drop to include labor and materials. How do I calculate sales tax on a portion of the $150.00? Is that possible. We have been breaking it out.. but it is tedious and confusing to customers. Any Ideas? Thanks for your help. Jennifer Hi Jennifer That certainly is a dilemma - you need to be…