How to Track Job Costs In Quickbooks
Regardless of the industry or niche in which your business operates, it’s important to track the cost of jobs. This involves keeping records of all expenses pertaining to your business’s operations. Quickbooks Desktop has a built-in job costing tool to help facilitate this process. Using this tool, you can see how much money you’ve spent, as well as how much money you’ve made, for each job. In addition to using this tool, you should consider the following tips to track job costs more effectively in Quickbooks.
Create a Customer: Job for Every Job
Try to get into the habit of creating a Customer:Job for every job. Doing so will allow you to keep track of the income and expenses for each specific job; thus, simplifying your bookkeeping efforts. The only downside is that you may have to create a lot of Customers:Jobs, especially if you operate a large business. Nonetheless, this is still a great way to simplify your accounting.
Create Items to Optimize Job Costs
Intuit also recommend creating items to optimize job costs. You can adjust the amount of detail in these items according to the level of detail in your cost reports.
Assign All Expenses to All Jobs
Furthermore, it’s recommended that you assign all expenses to jobs. Prior to doing so, however, you should check to make sure the right job is listed in the Customer:Job column when you enter a bill or check. Expenses may include billable time, job-related purchases, overhead, mileage and other expenses. Go through each field to ensure you don’t skip or overlook any expenses.
Enter Estimates
Assuming you have Quickbooks Desktop, you can enter your estimates into the software. But even if you don’t have Quickbooks Desktop, you can still create an estimate outside of the software using a third-party program like Excel and then record those estimates into your Quickbooks account. If you choose to create estimates using a third-party program, be sure to enter your invoice information in the “Create Estimates” window. This will essentially convert your estimates into invoices.
Creating Invoices
When creating invoices, check to make sure the right Customer:Job is selected. If the you choose the wrong Customer:Job, the invoice will contain the wrong information.
These are just a few tips to remember when tracking job costs in Quickbooks.
Did this tutorial work for you? Let us know in the comments section below!