Before QuickBooks came along, tracking jobs or projects for your business probably involved file folders and paper invoices and bank statements and lots of sticky notes. You hoped that you didn’t forget to bill a customer or record a payment. And calculating the profitability of a job was quite a challenge.
QuickBooks makes these tasks easy. You can attach multiple jobs to customers and assign expenses to them when you enter a purchase. You can also assign estimates and invoices to specific jobs, then do the same when payments come in. QuickBooks allows you to create individual records for each job based on all this data, and run reports that gauge profitability and unbilled costs, for example.
Transaction and reports templates are all ready for you to fill with your own data. If you haven’t yet created records for the products and services you sell to complete your jobs, you should do so before you start building your first one you’ll need to be able to add those sales to your records.
Creating Item Records
It’s always a good idea to make your item records as comprehensive as possible. But it’s especially important when you’re going to be creating and tracking jobs. We’ll create a service that might be used by a landscaping service as an example.
To get started, open the Lists menu and select Item List. Click the down arrow next to Item in the lower left so you can familiarize yourself with the options available there. Click New. In the window that opens, select Service from the drop-down list that opens below Type. Give your service an Item Name/Number and click the box if it will be a Subitem of another account.
Figure 1: Before you can start building job records, you should create records for the products and services that will be used for them.
If you’re using a version of QuickBooks that says Enable under Units of Measure and you want to designate one, click the button and walk through the wizard to define it. If you’re using a version of QuickBooks that doesn’t offer it, don’t worry about it. Enter a brief Description in the appropriate field and then a Rate. Open the list in the Tax Code field and select either Tax or Non.
You may want to meet with someone in the office before you start creating items to go over the Tax Code and Account fields, or the question about assemblies or contractors â?? especially if you’re new to QuickBooks. They have to be correct, and you may have more questions if you have to create records for inventory parts, as this process is more complicated. If you’re sure of the information you entered here, though, click OK.
Creating Jobs
To start creating jobs, you need to open the Customers menu and click Customer Center. The Customers & Jobs tab on the left should be highlighted. Click the down arrow next to the field in the upper left and select New Customer & Job if you need to create a customer record first. If you already have a customer record, click once on the customer’s name in the list and then click Add Job. Either way, you’ll see a window like the one displayed below when you click the Job Info tab.
Figure 2: QuickBooks contains templates for each customer that you can use to create individual job records.
At the very top of this screen, above the window, you’ll see a field for Job Name, which you’ll need to enter. If this is a new customer, there won’t be an Opening Balance [dollar amount] As Of [Date]. If the customer owes you money from previous work, you’ll need to supply the balance owed, which you can find by looking in the Balance Total column back in the Customer Center’s customer list.
You’ll enter a Description, of course. If your company offers a variety of summer landscaping packages, you might want to be more specific (like Weekly and Monthly Summer Landscaping) so you can differentiate among them. You need to consider what kinds of Job Types you want to create. Click the down arrow in that field and select . Job Types provide a way for you to categorize different jobs.
Select your Job Status from the drop-down list, and then choose your Start Date and Projected End Date using the calendars provided. You’ll eventually be able to fill in the End Date field. When you’re done, click OK. Your new job will appear in the Customers & Jobs list, under the related customer.
You can assign expenses like products you purchase, billable time, mileage, overhead (ask us how you can calculate this), freight charges, postage, etc., to specific Jobs. And, of course, you’ll want to assign payments received to Jobs.
Creating Billable Time Entries
If you are using QuickBooks Payroll and you’re going to be tracking hours for an employee so that they will be paid for their time, make sure the worker is set up for this first. Go to Employees | Employee Center and double-click the employee’s name. Click Payroll Info and check the box in front of Use time data to create paychecks, then click OK to close the window.
When you want to enter hours worked on a specific Job, open the Employees menu again. Click Enter Time | Time| Enter Single Activity. Complete the fields in this window as pictured below.
Figure 1: You can create a record of billable time that will be used to both pay the employee and invoice the customer in this window.
If you don’t see the Enter Time option in the Employees menu, you havenâ??t turned on time-tracking in QuickBooks. Go to Edit | Preferences | Time & Expenses and click Company Preferences. Click the Yes button under Do you track time? There are other options in this window. You can mark all time entries as billable, for example, and set a Default Markup Percentage. If you want to move time and expense entries into customer invoices automatically, check the box in front of Create invoices from a list of time and expenses. When youâ??re done, click OK.
Questions on this window? Do not hesitate to call for assistance.
Assigning Jobs to Other Transactions
Any transaction in QuickBooks that can be assigned to a customer can be assigned to a job. In all cases, assign the Job itself, not just the customer. And where appropriate, there will always be a Billable column or checkbox. Here are some examples of the transactions you can use:
Checks. This one’s easy. When you write a check, simply assign it to a CUSTOMER:JOB, whether itâ??s for Expenses or Items.
Sales Receipts. Say you’re doing a one-off task like tree and shrub trimming (as part of a larger Job), and the customer wants to pay you on the spot. In this case, you’d create a Sales Receipt. Go to Customers | Enter Sales Receipts. Select the CUSTOMER:JOB and fill out the rest of the fields, then save the transaction.
Bills. If you’ve ordered items to use for a specific Job and enter/pay the bill in QuickBooks, be sure to attribute it to the CUSTOMER:JOB.
Credit Card Charges. If you put an expense for a Job on a credit card, be sure to select the CUSTOMER:JOB when you enter it in QuickBooks.
Invoices. It’s likely that you’re going to invoice customers for multiple transactions that you’ve assigned to a Job â?? that’s why you’re setting it up as a Job in the first place. There are at least four ways to do this.
- Start an invoice at the beginning of the Job and keep adding products, services, and expenses to it until you’re ready to bill the customer. This is probably the least elegant way to do it since you’ll have to keep remembering the invoice number, for one thing.
- Enter your billable items as individual entries as you go along. When you’re ready to bill the customer, open an invoice form and select the CUSTOMER | JOB. This window will open:
Figure 2: When you create an invoice for a customer who has outstanding billable time and expenses, QuickBooks will display this window.
Open the Customers menu and click Invoice for Time & Expenses. QuickBooks will display a list of Time, Expenses, Mileage, and Items. You select the date range and template type, and the software will create an invoice for the transactions you check. Use Progress Invoicing. Enter products and services on an estimate, and you’ll be able to invoice them in batches. We can show you how to do this.
Of course, you’ll eventually want to know how profitable all your Jobs are so you can adjust as needed. QuickBooks can help you determine this, but help is just a phone call away if you need assistance. If you want to schedule a session to talk about this or any other element of QuickBooks, please call.