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… My friend and colleague, Bryan Kaplan of Construction Consulting, recently sent an email about his experience with Purchase Orders that was so insightful, I asked him if I could share it with you. This quick read will provide you with a handful of Quick Wins! It was 11 pm on a random Saturday, and …
Did you know that job costing can create an epic increase in your gross profits? Are you a business owner or financial manager who wonders if it’s worth your time to implement an internal job costing system? If so, you might be asking yourself… Why should I care about job costing? Why not just assign …
Do you have QuickBooks lists structured to show 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 multiple “layers” of Items arranged …
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
Example calculations illustrate that, even when employees are paid the same amount, different fully-burdened labor rates combined with different gross profit targets can make a large difference in hourly billing rates and annual profits.
What Will The Labor on That Job REALLY Cost? Without Fully-Burdened Labor Cost Info, You May Be Surprised… If you’re not using fully-burdened labor costs on jobs, you may find that your estimates aren’t as accurate as they should be. But, when you know how much each employee actually costs per production hour, you can …
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 …
This post about QuickBooks Items is based on our more extensive training video of the same title that’s included in our Construction Accounting & Management Program (CAMP). Why are QuickBooks Items Especially Important for Construction Companies? QuickBooks Items let you track, and report on, the financial detail underlying what’s REALLY going on within the financial …
None of the builders or remodelers I’m acquainted with want to learn two or three months after a job is completed they lost money on the job, or only made a gross profit of 2%.
A Humorous & Insightful Email… A builder contacted me some months ago about which QuickBooks software program he should use – QuickBooks Online? Or one of the desktop versions – QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, or Enterprise? After our conversation, I didn’t hear back from him so, being busy with other clients, I assumed he’d made …
When it’s time to set your QuickBooks Online User Permissions, here are the choices you’ll see in the Plus version. You’ll need to decide what access and permissions you’re willing to grant to which users… Company Administrators have all access rights within QuickBooks Online Plus. They also have all access rights for any other service your company subscribes …
How do QuickBooks Memorized Transactions relate to pizza? Join Sheila as she experiences an eye-opening and rewarding “Pizza-Lunch-n-Learn” with her friend, Gail… Sheila sat at her desk, staring at the pile of paperwork that she’d need to go through in order to prepare the invoices for the McLusky job. This project was their largest custom home …
“Why isn’t my company making more money? We’re busier than ever, I’m working harder than ever, but things just aren’t coming together like they should!” If this sounds or feels familiar, you may want to sit in on this meeting to pick up some ideas… It Just Doesn’t Make Sense!!! Matt was nearing the end …
Ever wondered if you could receive more useful and meaningful reports from QuickBooks? Good financial information is not just a matter of convenience! Nick is finding out that what he DOESN’T know about his financial system could pose a major setback to his business… Nick’s “Unique” Profit & Loss Statement “Wow, this is about the longest …
What unfortunate events can occur when your QuickBooks Chart of Accounts, the foundation for your critical company reports, isn’t set up in the best possible way? Marcia was in the middle of sorting the day’s incoming mail when David, her boss (the company owner), popped into her office. Before he even spoke, Marcia thought, “Now what?” As usual, …
New to QuickBooks? Feel like you’re all alone? Well, you’re not! You’ve started your new business from scratch and know you need to really get a handle on your numbers. Maybe you’ve been recruited by a family member – or hired by a business owner – to take over the bookkeeping. Perhaps you’ve decided to switch your …
QuickBooks is designed to help you to plan, measure, and monitor company and job results. When you use its management reporting tools you can immediately see operating and financial results. You can use this information to proactively take action to correct problems – before they spin out of control! Or, after you take a deeper look, you …
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 …
Finding clients and providing products and services – that’s just the beginning! Here’s how to be more profitable with QuickBooks… Successfully managing your own company means that you need to get profitable – and stay that way. Unfortunately, many business owners don’t realize how their day-to-day financial info impacts their profits. To achieve consistent profitability, …
Use this overview reporting example to help check your company-wide Gross Profit. If you divide your profit by the Cost of Production, you can then compute what your average Markup has been. Have you been charging enough? Use the following reference charts to easily convert between Gross Profit and Markup as you estimate costs …
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 going wrong (financially) as the job …
Will the QuickBooks Sunset Impact My Accounting or Intuit Services? Until May 31, 2021, QuickBooks provides customer support and add-on services for Pro, Premier, and Enterprise Solutions 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. However, if you are still using a 2018 version of QuickBooks, your business may be affected on May 31st. Why? If you are …
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 …
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 to be able to see that unique information when you view Customer:Jobs, Vendor, …
How Much Could You Be Losing if You Under Charge for Employee Time? Free Calculator Helps You Estimate! Are You Losing a LOT of Money By Under Billing for Employee Labor? Let’s do the math: Here’s a free calculator you can use to find out how much revenue you may be losing over one, three, and five years if …
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? Ask 10 small business people which element of their accounting tasks they’d like to shed, …
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 Shadowing – Could It Work For YOUR Company? A client recently told me that she wasn’t as pleased with the performance of a couple of …
When it Comes to Weird Job-Cost & Gross Profit Numbers – the ‘Game is Afoot’ If you haven’t already read them, you’ll probably want to visit Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV of this “Tale of 4 Companies: A Job-Cost & Gross Profit Percentage Drama” before beginning the following “Part V.” We’re …
When you make it easier for your customers to buy from you – and pay you – two things typically happen: your sales increase, and you get paid faster. That means enhanced cash flow and fewer collection calls. Plus, a side benefit is that customer satisfaction is often higher when goods or services have been paid …
One of your early tasks as a payroll administrator will be to establish payroll schedules for your employees. Here’s how. Payroll administration can be complex and time-consuming. It requires precision and tremendous attention to detail. Because your employees are counting on you for their livelihood, and multiple taxing agencies expect you to submit your payments …
Targeting Gross Profits: How Estimators and Supervisors Focus on Goals & Job-Costs at Paul’s Perfect Projects, LLC 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 Percentage Drama” before beginning the following “Part IV”. As we join Paul and …
How Bookkeeping Supports Job-Cost & Gross Profit Measurement at Paul’s Perfect Projects, LLC If you haven’t already read them, you’ll probably want to visit Part I and Part II of this “Tale of 4 Companies: A Job-Cost & Gross Profit Percentage Drama” before starting the following “Part III”. In Part III, Paul & Dave have …
They’re not cast in cement, but accounting professionals tend to agree that these best practices for QuickBooks payments can improve the speed and accuracy of your payments – both incoming and outgoing. Old habits are hard to break. Once you start doing something one way, it can be hard to change course. There has to …
Paul (of Paul’s Perfect Projects, LLC) tackles the gross profit problem by showing Dave his Estimate vs. Actual variance reports. (If you haven’t already read it, you’ll want to visit Part I of this “Tale of 4 Companies: A Job-Cost & Gross Profit Percentage Drama” before jumping into the following “Part II”…) Paul’s Approach to …
Can you really affect your gross profit by setting up a job-costing system? Is it worth the time, energy and effort involved to measure, track, and modify? Let’s visit with the owners of several hypothetical companies – and then you can decide for yourself which owner’s shoes you’d prefer to step into… As background to …
Paying your QuickBooks Bills can be easier (even pain free!) – when you use your software to its fullest capacity. Paying QuickBooks Bills with a Credit Card Situation 1: You’ve entered a bill into your QuickBooks, and it’s now listed as an outstanding payable. You’ve just determined that some of these QuickBooks Bills were (or will be) paid with …
Most small and medium-sized businesses don’t know their exact employee labor rates – or how much they should charge for their employees’ time. Employee Time: Why Run Your Own Employee Labor Rate Calculations? It may appear that the easiest way is to “wing it”, or to adopt cost averages for your industry, but if you use either …
To calculate Manufacturing Overhead by Job, be sure to include these labor costs Manufacturing direct labor costs vs. manufacturing overhead labor: what’s the difference? And which should you include in your costing and pricing models? Direct production costs obviously include costs of inventory utilized, special-order materials, production facilities, high-dollar equipment usage, contracted services from outside …
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 …
Calculating labor costs 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 figuring out whether an employee’s time is being put to maximum benefit for a business, and without a true cost of labor that is current …
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 …
Recently, a participant in one of the online forums that I like to ‘attend’ asked “What should I look for when I choose my next accountant?” As a QuickBooks accountant (ProAdvisor) who’s worked with many different clients within the construction, manufacturing, and various other industries (and ‘in the wake’ of other accountants), I’ve learned that many business owners don’t really …
Do you ever wonder if you’re using QuickBooks to its fullest potential? Check out a QuickBooks course to learn how to make it work for you. Are you one of the millions of businesses using QuickBooks for in-house accounting? Do you ever find the program frustrating? Do you ever wonder if you’re using QuickBooks to …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …