QuickBooks | QuickBooks for Contractors blog

02Jan 2017 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks – Print function disabled for W2’s, 1099’s, etc.

Meeting an earlier W-2 and 1099 deadline (now January 31, 2017) just got a little more complicated and time-consuming. A recent QuickBooks payroll update has disabled the print function for W's, 1099's, 941's, 940's, and other year-end payroll tax returns. NOTE: I'm pretty certain it was a payroll update and not a normal QuickBooks maintenance release that did this - mainly because I have not installed the most recent maintenance release so that should not be the cause. First the really bad news. If you planned on printing your W-'s on pre-printed forms - forget about it. If you need to export W-2 and 1099 information to a 3rd party (such as Mag-Filer) - forget about it - as the Print to Text export has also been disabled. Now for…

03Nov 2016 by Nancy Smyth

Someone literally stole our content!

"Stuff" that drives me insane

Maybe you've noticed (and maybe you haven't) that it's been mighty quiet around here and I've been an absent blogger for well over a year, so I thought I'd hop in here and let you all know what is going on ---- finally! First of all, let me assure everyone that: I haven't stopped supporting QuickBooks I haven't stopped supporting contractors using QuickBooks I haven't run out of tips and tricks to write about and I really haven't fallen off the face of the earth :-) What has happened (and I'm going to be REALLY blunt here) is that I have become very aggravated and disillusioned by the people who are supposed to be my "peers" - namely other so-called "QuickBooks professionals" and I use that term quite loosely. Now,…

19Mar 2015 by Nancy Smyth

Tips for Effectively Using QuickBooks Purchase Orders

Job Costing Tips, Vendors & Accounts Payable

Using Purchase Orders and running the Open Purchase Orders by Job report in QuickBooks are excellent tools for General Contractors as well as Subcontractors who sub out a portion of the job to someone else. Purchase Orders can also be customized and used to record a verbal bid for materials from a supplier as well as using them to create an Invitation to Bid, which will ultimately be sent to several subcontractors at once. 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…

09Sep 2014 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks 2015 Announced – Important System Requirements

QuickBooks 2015 - What's New?

QuickBooks 2015 was announced and release to Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors yesterday - which means that end users will have it made available to them either the end of this month or the beginning of October; there are no firm dates as of yet. Before I start talking about some of the new features that I think are ok, good, or great - I want to address system requirements, which I feel is very important. QuickBooks 2015 does not support Windows XP As Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and 3rd party desktop developer, I still have clients and customers using Windows XP and I'm betting that you do too - and that's why I think this is important. Also, if you are running QuickBooks 2012 and need payroll or access to online banking…

05Sep 2014 by Roxanne Brown

How do Amazon Merchants Reconcile in QuickBooks? Webinar

From Our Guest Bloggers, QuickBooks Corner

One of the biggest struggles for merchants that sell on Amazon Seller Central; or participate in Amazon FBA is how to reconcile their orders with the payments received. Amazon pays their merchants either weekly, bi-weekly, or in some rare cases daily. The majority of merchants I work with are paid bi-weekly or weekly. They also combine all types of payments in your settlement; making it almost impossible to truly see the details behind Seller Central versus FBA sales. I can’t stress how important it is to understand what’s going on with your Amazon accounts; however it’s definitely not an easy task – until now. Many merchants take it on faith that they are getting paid for everything and they try their best to understand what is selling and how profitable…

04Jun 2014 by Nancy Smyth

Simple Controls You Can Put Into Place to Discourage Fraud

News You Can Use

As a business owner, there are many simple controls that you can put into place to discourage fraud from happening. Small business owners never intend to leave their doors wide open to theft and white collar crime – it just sort of happens; and unfortunately, small businesses have every reason to be concerned about fraud. Fraud is often a cost of doing business that is hidden from view and unfortunately most business owners only know about fraud only when it's discovered; after the fact and then it is sometimes too late to do anything. Eliminating fraud completely isn't possible, but with reasonable actions made by the business owner, it's impact can be limited. Preventing fraud from occurring in the first place, however, is a win-win situation. This final article in…

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…

08Apr 2014 by Nancy Smyth

Technology is Changing How We Submit Certified Payroll Reports

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, New Technology, QuickBooks Add-Ons, The "Sunburst" Website

Technology - computers, software, and the internet - has changed how we create and submit certified payroll reports over the last decade. For many years a paper certified payroll report - either the Federal WH-347 or a state specific form - was what you needed; and then you dug out the typewriter and typed the information onto the form - or - you painstakingly handwrote the information onto the form. Then along came computers and programs like LOTUS 1-2-3 and Excel and we would recreate the layout of the paper form using the program and fill it in each week – it was faster, neater, easier to correct typo's, and we felt that we were automating the task at hand. Then, some of the software companies created a “certified payroll…

05Mar 2014 by Nancy Smyth

Ask Me Anything – 10 Common Questions about Certified Payroll

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage

Below are the 10 most common questions I’m asked just about every week about certified payroll and their answers. While these question commonly come from QuickBooks users the answers provided will apply to anyone who has to deal with the complexities of prevailing wage reporting. 1. I have to submit the Federal WH-347 form, how do I report the fringes that my company pays to the union hall? The Federal form only requires that you report payments of cash in lieu of fringe benefits (or fringe dollars that you pay to the employee as part of gross wages for the week) – NOT fringes you pay to the Union Hall on behalf of the employee. For fringes paid to the Union Hall, check box 4(a) Where Fringe Benefits are paid…

12Feb 2014 by Nancy Smyth

Are Your QuickBooks Payroll & Certified Payroll Processes Efficient?

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Payroll Tips, QuickBooks Add-Ons, Webinars & Training

QuickBooks Payroll and Certified Payroll processes really need to be efficient in order for a business to be successful. When one of your businesses largest job expenses is payroll, you need to: pay your employees correctly and on time to keep them happy, make sure that those payroll costs are part of your accounting system so those costs are included in job costing reports, and you need to submit your certified payroll reports accurately and in a timely fashion in order to be paid. Yes, it's a vicious cycle! Ask any business owner how efficient he thinks his payroll and certified payroll processes are and I'm betting he'll either say "oh they are very efficient" or "they could be better". Ask his payroll clerk who is dealing with 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…

17Jan 2014 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Timely Payroll Alerts, Updates & Issues for 2013 Payroll Tax Returns

Payroll Tips, QuickBooks Reviews

So here we all are scrambling to get all of our payroll tax returns completed for year-ending 12/31/2013 (myself included) and I just receive this information via my ProAdvisor membership. Issues: Form 940 for Year Ending 12/31/2013 - Schedule A Rounding Issues in QuickBooks 2011-2014 From the Intuit Payroll Support Knowledgebase Problem: You received an error on your 2013 Form 940/Schedule A indicating you have a difference that is greater or less than $5 between the Total FUTA taxable wages for credit reduction states on Schedule A and the taxable FUTA wages on Form 940 page 1, line 7. This error could be due to the way the wages are rounded on Schedule A. You can correct this by verifying the totals and overriding the wages on Schedule A. For…

10Jan 2014 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Tip: How to Calculate Over/Under Billings

Job Costing Tips, Reports

The construction industry often requires that your financial statements be based on Percentage of Completion accounting practices - where you recognize revenue progressively throughout the life of the job. The Percentage of Completion is determined by dividing the costs to date over the current budget (Estimate). The current budget is defined as the original budget (Estimate) plus any approved change orders. An adjustment to the financials for overstated/understated revenue must then happen, because customer monies are often collected in advance of the work in job costing, you’ll want to state the true revenue on the financials carefully. Accounting guidelines recommend that you make your percentage of completion calculations based on Revenue Earned = (Total Costs to Date / Current Project Budget) x Current Customer Contract Sales Price. In reality, you…

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…

02Dec 2013 by Nancy Smyth

Sunburst’s Weekly Wrap-Up of Popular Posts 11/24 – 12/1/2013

News You Can Use

Here at Sunburst, we specialize in QuickBooks for the construction industry – and we have an incredible amount of information between our three QuickBooks related websites; so much so that sometimes people are overwhelmed – I know I am in trying to keep it all straight! Below is a list of the most popular posts and pages from the Sunburst Software Solutions, Inc. family of QuickBooks related websites according to AddThis tracking stats. From the QuickBooks for Contractors blog: QuickBooks at Year-End: Getting Ready for 1099?s QuickBooks Tip – Job Costing Starts With A Simple Item Searching For the Right Time Tracking Add-On for QuickBooks? Cleaning Up Your QuickBooks File at Year End Using Account Numbers in Your QuickBooks Chart of Accounts QuickBooks 2013 Upgrade Do’s, Don’ts & Frequent Questions…