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Job Estimate Tip: Use Fully-Burdened Labor Rates

How fully-burdened job costs yield more accurate estimates

Labor Profit Tip #1: For More Accurate Job Estimates, Include Fully-Burdened Labor Costs for Each Employee What Will The Labor on That Job REALLY Cost? When You Don’t Include Fully-Burdened Labor Cost Info, You May Be In For A Surprise… If you’re not using fully-burdened labor costs for every employee’s work included in your estimates, …

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Broken Database Links In Your QuickBooks Data File – Part 2

How to verify your QuickBooks data file and rebuild your QuickBooks data file

The QuickBooks Data File Verification Feature Re-sorting Your QuickBooks List The first step in repairing QuickBooks data links in your QuickBooks Desktop or Enterprise files is to re-sort your QuickBooks list. Learn how here. Once you have re-sorted your QuickBooks list, if you are still suffering from broken database links in your QuickBooks data file, you’ll …

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Job Costing Increases Profits

Use job costing to dramatically increase profits

What is Job Costing? Job costing, also known by some as job order costing, is an accounting method used to track the costs associated with a specific job or project. This method is typically used in industries where goods or services are produced based on a specific customer order, and each order or job has …

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The Many Faces of Construction Job Costing

happy with job costing system

Income minus expenses equals gross profit. Your gross profit is the amount you use to run your company and create profits. Job-costing is how you can track the income and the costs you incur to perform each of your jobs. It’s how you get to see the gross profit you earn on each of your projects. Your perception of what you want to see from a job-costing system may be very different than another business owner’s concepts. Why? Because there is no single prescription that fits everyone’s needs.

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Purchase Orders Are Critical – Here’s Why…

Sample Purchase Order to clarify, document and save money

… My Canadian friend and colleague, Bryan Kaplan of Construction Consulting, recently sent an email about an experience with Purchase Orders that was so insightful I asked if I could share it with you. This quick read will provide you with a handful of Quick Wins! The Saturday Text… It was 11 pm on a …

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Top 7 Reasons Business Owners Call a QuickBooks ProAdvisor

Assistance from a QuickBooks Prodvisor

Based on 20+ years of incoming requests for assistance from business owners, here are the top 7 reasons I’ve found that they call me as a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. See if any of these scenarios sound like what you may be facing in your company… As a business owner, you learn through trial and error what makes …

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How to Squeeze More Profits Out of Every Construction Job

How to squeeze more profits out of every job

A version of this article first appeared in the Builder Partnerships newsletter. It just seems logical… …that every business owner would want to know exactly what each type of job costs (so they know how to price it). Right? And they’d want to monitor what’s going right and what’s not (financially) as the job progresses …

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15-Months in Your Business Year? How & When Will You Invest Them?

Business Planning Group

January to December… Our calendar encourages us to divide our personal and business lives into those 12-month chunks of time.  But what could happen if we decided to break out of that traditional mind-set – especially when it comes to business planning?        My “15-Month-Year” Business Planning & Coaching Session I recently sat in …

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A Tale of 4 Companies: Gross Profit & Job Cost (Part IV)

Communicating the Schedule Keeps Job Costs on Target to Hit Gross Profit Goals

Targeting Gross Profits: How Estimators and Project Managers Focus on Goals & Job Costs at Paul’s Perfect Projects If you haven’t already read them, you’ll probably want to visit Part I, Part II, and Part III of this “Tale of 4 Companies: A Job Cost & Gross Profit Drama” before beginning the following “Part IV”. As we …

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How to Use QuickBooks Job Cost Features to Achieve Your Gross Profit Goals

Job Costing In QuickBooks QuickBooks is designed to help you to plan, measure, and monitor company and job results. You can even use QuickBooks Job – Cost Features to Achieve Your Gross Profit Goals! Use its management reporting tools to immediately SEE operating and financial results. Proactively correct problems – before they spin out of …

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Top Accounting Blogs

The accounting blogs listed below are some of the most reputable and informative online. I wanted to create a quality resource for people seeking any additional accounting advice, so below you’ll find what I believe to be some of the top accounting blogs. As an endorsement, I’ve created a badge for them to display so that …

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9 Job Shadowing Benefits

What might you be able to accomplish for your company if you create employer or employee shadowing teams for a couple of hours? Or even a couple of days? Employer or Employee Job Shadowing – Could It Work For YOUR Company? A client recently told me that she wasn’t as pleased with the performance of a couple …

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Business Overhead Expenses

Calculating overhead can be tricky, but QuickBooks can help you calculate and monitor your business overhead expenses more efficiently and effectively. Business Overhead Expenses: What They Are and How To Calculate Them Have you ever wondered exactly WHAT business overhead expenses really ARE? Do you know what YOUR business overhead expenses are? Or how to …

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Wrong Date On A QuickBooks Transaction?

Wrong Date on Quickbooks Transaction

How to change a date on a QuickBooks transaction Changing a date on a QuickBooks transaction is an easy task. Simply click the date field in the transaction, then choose the correct date from the calendar that pops up. But wait, before you change the date on a transaction, you need to consider a much …

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Underbilling Calculation for Employee Labor: Free Labor Calculator

under billing calculation

How Much Are You Losing From Undercharging for Employee Time? This Free Calculator Helps You Estimate!  Underbilling for Employee Labor? Here’s what that’s costing you! Free Labor Calculator Here’s a free calculator to help you do the math. If you are underbilling for employee labor, use it to discover how much revenue you may lose …

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QuickBooks Account Reconciliation Discrepancies

Feeling Great when you Resolve QuickBooks Account Reconciliation Discrepancies

Company owners sometimes ask me:  “Should balance adjustments arising from account reconciliation problems cause me any concern?”  Do QuickBooks Account Reconciliation Discrepancies Matter? In my experience and opinion, accounts should reconcile – right down to the penny – almost all of the time! Account reconciliation is paramount; here’s why… The account reconciliation process is just …

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Manufacturing Overhead: How to Calculate Labor Cost by Job

Manufacturing Overhead Costs To calculate Manufacturing Overhead by Job, be sure to include both manufacturing direct labor costs and manufacturing overhead labor costs. How To Calculate Labor Cost One key in calculating the labor cost portion of your manufacturing overhead is understanding the difference between manufacturing direct labor costs and manufacturing overhead labor. Which of …

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Broken Database Links In Your QuickBooks Data File – Part 3

Fixing Data Damage in QuickBooks Company Files to Prevent QuickBooks Crashing How to Locate and correct damaged data and transactions in your QuickBooks data file. From time to time, QuickBooks data files become damaged or corrupted, which could cause QuickBooks to crash when opening or working in the company file. We know from experience how …

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QuickBooks Payroll: 5 Major Benefits

QuickBooks Payroll makes payday much easier

Yes, your initial QuickBooks payroll setup can take some time and requires attention to detail. BUT manual payroll processing requires even more work – and you have to do it over – and over – and over… Which sounds like the better choice?    QuickBooks Payroll Ask any 10 small and mid-sized business (SMB) bookkeepers and …

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How to Use QuickBooks More Effectively: 10 Tips

How to use QuickBooks Most Effectively

How to use QuickBooks most effectively can be a challenge. But, to help you, here are a series of QuickBooks “how-to” tips from BuildYourNumbers.com! How To Use QuickBooks Do you use QuickBooks to manage your accounting? For years, mid-sized and small-business owners have found QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, and Enterprise Solutions to be the most …

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Custom Fields in QuickBooks

Custom Fields to Customize QuickBooks Desktop

5 Ways to Tailor, Tag, & Track Specialized Information QuickBooks Custom Fields Have you explored the many ways to use Custom Fields in QuickBooks?  If not, you’ll likely be surprised at how this feature can vastly expand the “trackability” of specific data that’s unique (and often, vitally important) to your company. Would it be helpful …

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Setting Up Payroll Schedules in QuickBooks

QuickBooks Payroll and Payroll Schedules

One of your early tasks as a payroll administrator or when you convert to QuickBooks Payroll will be to establish payroll schedules in QuickBooks for your employees. Here’s how. Setting Up Payroll Schedules in QuickBooks Payroll administration can be complex and time-consuming. It requires precision and tremendous attention to detail. Because your employees are counting …

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How to Set (& Keep!) Your Hierarchical View in QuickBooks Lists

Hierarchical View in QuickBooks Do you have QuickBooks lists structured to show in a Hierarchical View? (Think “outline” with headers and sub-elements.) For instance: In your Customer:Job list, do you have a “header” as a Customer, and sub-elements as Jobs? (If not, you may want to do so…) Open your Item List. Do you have …

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The Worst Training You Can Buy (And Waste Your Time On)

You Found the Perfect Seminar… It’s the training resource you’ve been looking for to make the changes you want in your company. The main problem – your QuickBooks company file was set up wrong from day one. You’ve been making do, but haven’t been getting the job-costing information you need. Now you’ve found the solution …

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Using QuickBooks as your Construction Payroll Software

Keeping tracks of hours, union wages, social security, & workers comp can be difficult. Let specific construction payroll software help. If you run a remodeling or construction company with employees, you know that those employees are an essential element of your business. How else would you get client jobs completed for clients in a timely …

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Learn How To Use QuickBooks Online

Are you one of the many small-business owners taking on your own accounting? Let QuickBooks desktop help you like it’s helped millions others. In recent years, many small- and midsize-business owners have been steering away from using trained accountants for their financial needs and, instead, have taken on the responsibility internally – either by doing …

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Top Five Reasons To Use Inventory Software for Your Small Business

Learn how inventory software can help your small business save time and money over the long term. Small-business owners have to keep track of their inventory just like all other businesses, but with fewer resources available to them. You could try to track inventory by keeping a list in a notebook or on a spreadsheet, …

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Be More Successful Day-to-Day Through a Management Accounting System

Learn how to implement a management accounting system – so you can make informed business decisions each day! Did you know there are different types of accountants and accounting viewpoints? Many business owners don’t. There are a handful of different kinds of accounting systems, but the two main kinds are management accounting and financial accounting. …

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Labor Cost Calculator: How It Helps QuickBooks & Enterprise Users

Business owners who use QuickBooks or Enterprise accounting software can benefit greatly from the built-in job costing features such as its ability to assign payroll and payroll tax costs to jobs – but there is one major flaw built into those ‘normal’ job cost reports that you need to know about! This critical weakness means …

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12 Benefits of Running a More Profitable Company

Is your company profitable? It’s the time of year when hundreds of thousands of U.S. business owners are looking at their prior-year financial results to determine if their business was profitable… If you’re one of those business owners, it’s worth taking a moment to evaluate your success, and ask yourself: “Am I exuberantly happy? Somewhat …

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11 Ways to Take the Pain & Suffering Out of Tax Time

It’s that time of year again – TAX TIME! And guess what? I’ve been working with clients who have been turning in their numbers to their tax accountants starting the middle of January! If you’re someone who dreads January, February, March – and beyond – because those months seem to turn into “Franken-tax” time, you …

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Why You Need to Know Your True Cost of Labor

Calculating your true cost of labor seems straightforward: compensation plus benefits should equal how much you’re spending on labor, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, business owners don’t have it that easy. There’s much more to determining whether an employee’s time is being put to maximum benefit for a business, and without a true cost of labor that …

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9 Ways to Take the Pain & Suffering Out of Tax Time

It’s That Time of Year Again – TAX TIME! And guess what? I’ve been working with clients who have been turning their numbers over to their tax accountants starting the middle of January! Do you dread January, February, March – and beyond – because those months seem to turn into “Franken-tax” time? Are you asking …

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Accounting for Construction

Construction accounting is a unique type of accounting that requires specific financial management tools. Here’s what you need to know. Construction Accounting… As the owner of a remodeling or custom building company, you likely bring a huge list of abilities and talents to your daily work life! From the tangible job skills to the energy …

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Labor Profit Tip #5: The Secret to Making Better Hiring Decisions

Labor Burden Information Tip #5: Make Better Hiring Decisions by Thoroughly Understanding Potential Additional Costs Bad hiring decisions can have a devastating effect on your bottom line, so you want as much objective data at your fingertips as possible before you hire. You can use labor burden calculation information as a starting point when it’s …

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Labor Costs Profit Tip #4: How You Can Stop Over-Runs in Labor Costs

Labor Costs Are a Risky Part of Your Business. Make an Immediate Impact on Your Bottom Line by Heading off Costly Labor Over-runs Before They Get Out of Hand. 7 WAYS TO USE YOUR INFORMATION TO PREVENT LABOR COST OVER-RUNS Know and use your true, fully burdened labor costs when estimating. Increase estimating accuracy by using costs …

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Accounts Payable Information – Achieving a Clean Set of Numbers

Your Accounts Payable information needs to be accurate (i.e., “clean”) if you want to use the results to help gauge the financial health of your company. “Accounts Payable” Explained… Even if you are new to business, you may have heard the term “Accounts Payable.” If you haven’t worked as a bookkeeper or accountant, here’s an …

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Labor Profit Tip #3: Your Gross Profit numbers may be misleading

Labor Burden Information Tip #3: To See Accurate Job-Cost Reports, Assign Labor Burden Costs to Each Job. If you’re looking for ways to make your company more profitable, getting a handle on your fully burdened labor costs is a critical place to start because it can show you how to: Estimate labor costs more accurately, Price jobs to …

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Basic Accounting Concepts Explained

Starting or taking over your business’ accounting system can be confusing. So, let’s start by introducing some basic accounting concepts, principles & terms. First, it’s good to ask yourself, “Why is accounting an essential building block in my business?” Most people assume this is true and leave it at that. But in more concrete terms, …

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Gaining Control Through Job Cost Accounting

Learn how job cost accounting can help small-business owners take control over each job and their profits through cost and profit analysis. As a small-business owner, one of the best ways you can track the real progress of your business is through job cost accounting. In other words, if you keep track of your income …

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Raising Your Profits Through Job Cost Reporting

Job cost reporting can reveal the true costs and profits for each job as they happen, allowing you to fix issues before they cost you. Are you keeping a close eye on your materials costs, ‘shopping’ for the best deals on equipment, and managing employees so that they are making more money than they actually …

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