costing

Deducting the Cost of Lost Equipment from an Employee’s Pay

Published May 15, 2012 | By Nancy Smyth

Can you deduct the cost of lost equipment from your employee’s pay? As a business owner I'm betting that on more than one occasion you have had an employee who has lost his company provided cell phone more than once and you've have to replace it.

Perhaps you want to recover the cost of the phone via a payroll deduction - before you do, read the rest of this article, because the answer depends first on state and federal restrictions and second on how much you want to deduct.

Continue reading →

QuickBooks Tip: How To Create a Summary Invoice for Customers

Published March 30, 2012 | By Nancy Smyth

This QuickBooks tip discusses how to create a summary invoice for a customer when you need to track details for job costing purposes. Continue reading →

QuickBooks Cost Plus Billing: Automatic Markup of Items

Published March 19, 2012 | By Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks can do Cost Plus OR Time and Materials billing, however, Markups can only be calculated on Expenses. Learn about ways that you can mark-up Items. Continue reading →

Creating Estimates In Excel vs. QuickBooks – What’s the Difference?

Published January 9, 2012 | By Nancy Smyth

If you use QuickBooks for your accounting and you create your Estimates in Excel instead of within QuickBooks {which does provide you with an Estimating feature} you loose out on job costing capabilities and so much more! Continue reading →

Entering Job-to-Date Costs & Billing Data at the Item Level

Published September 8, 2011 | By Lorien Prince

A Guest blog post by Lorien Prince, CPA for a QuickBooks tip for entering Job-to-data costs and billing data at the item level when converting or archiving Continue reading →

Create a QuickBooks Job Cost Report With Hours & Payroll Costs

Published June 20, 2011 | By Nancy Smyth

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 which includes payroll/labor burden costs can provide a contractor with vital job costing information Continue reading →

Creating a Job Cost Report With Hours Worked – QuickBooks Tip

Published June 15, 2011 | By Nancy Smyth

Creating a job cost report displaying the hours worked by employee, on a specific job or on all jobs, can provide a contractor with vital job costing information. Continue reading →

QuickBooks Payroll Tip-Setting Up General Liability Insurance Tracking

Published April 11, 2011 | By Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Payroll, when properly set up, is capable of tracking and including the cost of your General Liability Insurance in job costing reports. Continue reading →

QuickBooks Tip – Understanding QuickBooks Inventory Cost

Published March 10, 2011 | By Charlie Russell

If you are using QuickBooks to manage your inventory, you need to understand how QuickBooks deals with the cost of inventory items. Guest blogger, Charlie Russell explains how QuickBooks handles these costs. Continue reading →

QuickBooks Contractor Tip-Capture Costs & Markup on Estimates

Published November 9, 2010 | By Nancy Smyth

There are many times that a contractor will want to create a budget, to capture the costs and markup, for a job that they are working on. There are several methods to do so Continue reading →

QuickBooks Job Costing – Determining Equipment Costs per Hour

Published July 14, 2010 | By Nancy Smyth

Equipment cost-per-hour rates are calculated by adding together three distinct pieces of information. Once you know your Equipment Costs per hour, use QuickBooks to track these costs for job costing purposes. Continue reading →

QuickBooks Tip – Construction Accounts Payable

Published June 24, 2010 | By Nancy Smyth

If you think that job costing is all it takes to have a good construction accounting system – think again! You need a firm handle on your costs and QuickBooks when properly setup and used does a very good job, however, you also need to be able to control those costs. Continue reading →

Contractors Really Need Technology Now – Bookkeeping in Bunny Slippers

Published June 16, 2010 | By Nancy Smyth

Now is the time for the construction industry to leverage technology to improve operational efficiencies and reduce operating costs, and to help reduce the impacts of constantly shifting materials costs due to globalization. Continue reading →

QuickBooks Tip – 12 Steps to Implement Job Costing

Published June 15, 2010 | By Nancy Smyth

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… Continue reading →

QuickBooks Tip – Job Costing Starts With A Simple Item

Published June 10, 2010 | By Nancy Smyth

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????? Continue reading →