The Most Useful QuickBooks Online Reports for Contractors

20 Dec The Most Useful QuickBooks Online Reports for Contractors

Smart Service integrates directly into your QuickBooks software to fill in all the gaps in functionality important to field service businesses. Smart Service serves as an easy, intuitive drag-and-drop scheduler, pulling in all your existing customer info from QuickBooks. Creating a job in Smart Service automatically generates a corresponding digital work order. You can either print this work order or dispatch it directly to your employees’ mobile devices using the Smart Service mobile app. If you’d like to learn more about Smart Service, schedule a free, online demonstration.

And because QuickBooks and Smart Service go together like peanut butter and jelly, you can then use that work order to create a billable invoice.Learn more. QuickBooks has versions for both Windows and Mac, as well as an online version, which works best for independent contractors. We’ve listed the regular price, but each plan is discounted by 50% for the first three months and each plan offers a 30-day free trial. We reviewed accounting apps on a variety of platforms, for mobile devices and desktop computers alike, so you can assess which features meet your needs as an independent contractor.

Create Invoice

Whether they chose to, or circumstances forced them to, these new entrepreneurs had to learn new ways to get paid and to prepare their income taxes. For contractors dealing with complex financials, another key difference between Xero and QBO is the availability of industry-specific features. But if you need features such as advanced reporting or live customer service, then QuickBooks Online is the right pick for you. Your customer and job information is synced from QuickBooks and Xero and your estimates are turned into work orders and invoices in a few clicks. With everything in the cloud and use insights about hours worked and estimated for future job costing.

Don’t forget the “Big Picture” by relying on your job cost reports to tell you everything you need to know about managing your business financially. Intuit reports that 94% of accounting professionals feel QuickBooks Online saves them time and thus saves their clients’ money. Excel is a spreadsheet program that you can use for multiple functions like creating databases, project management and, yes, accounting. However, creating a solid accounting database in Excel requires a thorough knowledge of how to set up spreadsheets and all the formulas that may entail. With QuickBooks, it is very simple to track time as well as billable expenses incurred by employees or subcontractors.

Construction Accounting: 5 QuickBooks Tips for Contractors

It’s also critical to avoid having too many of these open, as this can produce a cash flow problem. I’m Penny Lane, I’ve been a Certified QuickBooks Pro-Advisor since 2006, and I’ve been in the bookkeeping business for over a decade. The bookkeeper doesn’t usually have to get into the third-party construction bookkeeping software — and the contractor doesn’t have to get into QuickBooks. QuickBooks Desktop can also be accessed remotely, either with Qbox, hosting, or a teamviewer type program. Although it sounds like a lot of steps, it’s not very complicated and it may not take much time at all.

Get the latest updates on how to focus your financial goals and relentlessly maximize your bottom line by building a healthier, financially independent business. If the contractor uses Progress Invoicing, which is strongly recommended, he or she should be concerned about Job Progress Invoices vs Estimate Report. With this parameter, you’ll want to ensure that there’s a match between what QuickBooks says you should have on hand and in the bank and what you actually have. Checking this frequently is a fantastic approach to find anomalies quickly. If you’re struggling with QuickBooks for Contractors, please know it’s not you! No matter what type of contracting business you have, I can show you how to put QuickBooks to work for your business.

QuickBooks Online syncs with construction project management software like Buildertrend

Taking the seven job reports into consideration might assist in getting the company moving in the right path. These cashflow reports help plan for the variability of costs in the projects, invoice dispatch and payments, and payroll for labor. Also, if a project is not going to plan, these reports can help you come up with scenarios to reduce overhead costs, remain profitable, or in the worst case, calculate the breakeven point.

No other burden like work comp, which is kind of a big deal — and quite a pain to allocate separately. Keep on reading to get up to speed on what job costing in QuickBooks Desktop vs QuickBooks Online really looks like. Workyard provides leading workforce management solutions to construction, service, and property maintenance companies of all sizes. By doing so you get the added benefit of being able to track your actual costs versus your original budget on the Quickbooks Online job dashboard. The vendor records you create will appear in QuickBooks Online’s Vendors list (again, Expenses | Vendors).

Most General Contractor QuickBooks Online Setup Do Not Work!

Since the estimates are item based the reports work much better this way. The numbers are what make or break any business and being too busy to not utilize financials is not good business sense. If you want to be profitable and not just busy, take time to know where you are and are not making money on a project. You don’t always need to pay extra for the Contractor’s Edition. It all depends on your particular business model and whether or not the additional reports/added features add value to you.