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QuickBooks Synergy

Note: This Course is being demonstrated with QuickBooks Premier 2010 Contractors Edition and

Minutes Matter QuickBooks & Quoting. In older versions of QuickBooks & Quoting the

terminology “Upfront Deposit” may be used instead of “Down Payment”

Life Cycle of a Job in QuickBooks Overview Page 2

Getting Ready Page 3

Inventory or Non-Inventory

Step 1 – The Estimate Page 4

Groups – G- or GP-

Down payments

Letters for Itemized Proposals

Step 2 – Ordering & Receiving Merchandise Page 5

PO‟s Method 1 (Premier Contractors Edition)

PO‟s Method 2 (Pro Version)

Receiving Items

Paying Bills

Step 3 – The Invoice Page 9

One click Invoices

Final Payments

Hot Keys & Shortcuts Page 10

QuickBooks & Quoting Numerical Item List Page 11

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Life Cycle of a Job Overview

Step 1

Create Your “Estimate”

(Pick up your down payment from the Customer)

Add the “Upfront Deposit” Item to the Estimate

Create a “Sales Receipt” for the down payment check

Use the “Deposit” screen to deposit the money into your checking account

Step 2

Create “Purchase Orders”

Receive Items and “Enter bills”

“Pay Bills”

(Fabricate or Assemble the Job)

Step 3

Create “Invoice” from the Estimate

(Deliver and Install the job, picking up the final check)

Receive the payment, using the “Payment” screen, applying it to the open

invoice

Use the “Deposit” screen to deposit the money into your checking account

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Getting Ready

Personalize & Clean Up QuickBooks Lists

Chart Of Accounts

Item List

o Edit Pricing

o Edit Group Items

Vendor List

Customer List

Other Name List

Inventory or Non-Inventory Items

Definitions

Inventory parts are items that you buy and then stock for a while before selling.

QuickBooks tracks the quantity on hand, the current inventory value, and the average

cost of your inventory items. It also tracks some accounting information like “cost of

goods sold “for inventory items that you have sold.

Non-inventory parts are items that you purchase (usually on behalf of a specific

customer) and then immediately sell or install, or items that you sell without ever buying.

For non-inventory parts, QuickBooks will only track how much you have spent or taken in.

Some people use non-inventory parts even for items that they stock because they prefer

a simpler approach—even though it gives them less information.

Inventory Items will show up on your job Profitability report with cost and revenue amounts. Non-

Inventory Items cost and revenue will not show up unless the invoice you purchased them with

has the Customer:Job designation on it. Think this through carefully…is it important enough to

track on an individual basis or not. It is usually best to start with just one or two inventory items,

get used to the process and then add Inventory Items as you see the need.

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“CTRL Delete” deletes one line (1 item) at a time or (right-click “delete line”)

“CTRL Insert” inserts one line so you can add an item to your group on this estimate

Highlight text and “delete” to remove text not needed for this estimate on any item

“On the Fly” Edits are temporary, for this Proposal only (Quantity, Pricing, Description)

Step 1 - The Estimate

Create Your “Estimate” Start with a Group Item

o G- (Summary Style) or a GP- (Detail Style)

o Keep, Delete, or Change Items that come in by default

o Add any Items that did not come in by default

(Pick up your down payment from the Customer)

Add the “Upfront Deposit” Item to the Estimate

o Use a negative number to reduce the Total on the Estimate

o This step is for your convenience and not for accounting

Create a “Sales Receipt” for the down payment check

o This is the first notification we have given QuickBooks that we have

accepted money

o Use the same item, Down payment, that you used on the Estimate

o We use a Sales Receipt because we don‟t have an Invoice yet.

o The Estimate is our working document until we are ready to deliver the job.

o The money will sit in our “Undeposited Funds” account until we are ready

to go to the bank

Use the “Deposit” screen to deposit the money into your checking account

o The “Undeposited Funds account will open and we need to checkmark it

to move it from Undeposited Funds to your checking account.

Printing Summarized & Itemized Versions

Use Letters for itemized Proposals as a backup document for your “pretty” Non-Itemized

Proposal (Recent versions of QuickBooks & Quoting have a letter template “QBQ Estimate Letter

with Details already edited for you) If you need to edit your Letter Template, follow the steps

below.

Letters, Prepare a Letter…, Create or Edit a Letter Template, View or Edit Existing Letter

Templates, “ESTIMATE LETTER WITH DETAILS”,

Microsoft Word will open the template so you can make the edits I have listed below.

“SAVE AS” Do this first so you don‟t forget, give it a name you will recognize like “POA

Proposal with Details”

EDITS: Landscape, Margins (.5), Delete unnecessary text, Save

Using Table Tools:

Delete or Insert a row or column

Highlight a column, right-click “AutoFit to Contents”

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Step 2 – Ordering, Receiving and paying for Merchandise

PO‟s Method 1 - Creating Purchase Orders from an Estimate (available in Premier Contractor‟s

version)

Open your estimate, click on the drop down menu arrow for Create Invoice>Create PO. The

screen that opens is very important; choose “Create PO for selected items”

The next screen that opens lets you choose which items to create a PO for. Choose only the

items for one Vendor at a time. For example our Main Fabric and Contrast Fabric are both from

Kasmir.

The PO opens and we must choose the Vendor “Kasmir” as we don„t have a “Preferred Vendor”

chosen for these items. We use several fabric vendors so we don‟t want one to automatically fill

in for us. Some items you will want to have a “Preferred Vendor and this would auto-fill for you.

Here is our Purchase Order all filled out for us. Print, Save and Fax to the Vendor

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Notice how by allowing QB to create the PO from the Proposal/Estimate it used the EXACT SAME

ITEM as we used on our Proposal? That‟s the matching rule. This is very important if you want

your cost and revenue from each item to show up on your Job Profitability report beside each

other.

PO‟s Method 2

You will need to open the Purchase Order screen “Vendors Create Purchase Orders” and

enter all of your information manually. It‟s not hard you just have to make sure you remember

the matching rule and use the same items on your Purchase Orders that you used on the

Estimate.

Receiving Items

When you create PO‟s you need to “Receive the Items”. You can do this one of three ways

Receive Items using the “One Step” method

o Receive Items by creating a bill to pay later

o Receive Items by writing a check to the vendor

o Receive Items by entering a credit card charge

When you enter the Vendor in a bill (check or credit card posting screen) if you have an open

PO for that vendor, QuickBooks will ask you if you want to use that PO to fill in the transaction.

The screenshot‟s below show entering a bill as an example.

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You

Like Magic, QB creates the bill and

employing “the matching rule” uses the

EXACT same items again……its so easy!

Now you will want to edit the bill at this

point for any price changes and add an

item for shipping charges for the client.

Make sure the billable column is

unchecked, because you have already

charged the customer on the estimate for

all of these items. Save & Close….

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Paying Bills - Let QuickBooks Do the Work

You do not have to post bills in order to write a check and pay bills, but we do recommend it.

Do the things the same way, every time and you don‟t have to think so hard, things become

routine and easy. So let‟s assume when you get bills you post them and then you pay them.

You are doing it with PO‟s so let‟s use the same process for all bills.

Under Vendors, Choose “Enter Bills”

We are going to enter a bill for our cell phone, when we start typing the vendor name, QB auto-

fills the name and the amounts from our last bill posting. Very Handy! We are using the Expenses

tab because these are business expenses and not items we have ordered for a customer. The

second screen shows the bill that we entered for our customer previously.

Now we have all of our bills entered and we want to pay some bills. Choose “Pay Bills” under

your Vendor menu.

Click off the bills you want to pay.

You can choose to pay them by check or by

Credit Card.

You can print your checks or you can assign

check numbers to them based on checks you

have hand written.

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Step 3 - The Invoice

Generate the Invoice & Apply the Final Payment

Open your Estimate and click on the Create Invoice button.

At this point you can make any changes that came up in the course of the job, fabric or trim

that changed. Maybe they added some pillows or accessories. Remember that items inside

the “Group” won‟t print, if you want an item to print to show the change you must add that item

outside of the “Group”, below the description line.

Notice how QB “remembered” the down payment we collected for this job? Customers really

like seeing that info on the final invoice, including the check number and date. I like I didn‟t

have to go look anything up or remember! Now all that is left is to deliver the job and pick up

your money.

Come back to QB, use the Payment screen to apply the money to an invoice, and fill out the

deposit screen. I have screen shots of both below.

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Hot Keys/Shortcuts

Dates Moving in a Window

Next Day + (plus key) Next Field Tab

Previous Day - (minus key) Previous Field Shift + Tab

Today T Beginning of Field/Row Home

First Day of the Week W End of Field/Row End

Last Day of the Week K Line Below Down Arrow

First Day of the Month M Line Above Up Arrow

Last Day of the Month H Down one screen Page Down

First Day of the Year Y Up One Screen Page Up

Last Day of the Year R Next Word in Field Ctrl + right arrow

Previous Word in Field Ctrl + left arrow

General End of Field/Row Esc or Alt+F4

Delete Ctrl + D

Edit Lists or Registers Ctrl + E

Find Ctrl + F

Quick Reports on Transactions Ctrl + Q

Invoice Ctrl + I

Display Memorized Trans Ctrl + T

Print Ctrl + P

Use List Item Ctrl + U

Record Always Ctrl + Enter

Add line to Invoice Ctrl + Ins

Decrease number by 1 - (minus key)

Chart of Accounts Ctrl + A

Write Checks Ctrl + W

Copy Transaction in Register Ctrl + O

Customer:Job List Ctrl + J

History of A/R or A/P Ctrl + H

Memorize Report or Transaction Ctrl + M

New Invoice/bill/check Ctrl + N

Register Display Ctrl + R

Undo Changes Ctrl + Z

Delete line from invoice Ctrl + Del

Insert Line from Invoice Ctrl + Ins

Increase number by 1 + (plus key)

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QuickBooks & Quoting Item Code Account Numbers

100 BEDDING & PILLOWS

BED COVERS

DUST SKIRTS

HEADBOARDS

OTHER BEDDING

PILLOWS

SHAMS

200 CORNICES

ARCHES

CORNICES

300 DRAPERIES

ARCHES

DRAPERIES

400 FABRIC SHADES

BALLOONS

FABRIC SHADES

500 NON-TAXABLE SERVICES

600 SUB-CONTRACTORS

700 SWAGS

ARCHES

SWAGS

800 TOP TREATMENTS

ARCHES

TOP TREATMENTS

900 MISCELLANEOUS LABOR

950 SURCHARGES

1100 LINING (Inventory)

1200 HARD TREATMENTS

1300 HARDWARE

KIRSCH CONTINENTAL RODDING

KIRSCH LOCKSEAM RODS

KIRSCH HARDWARE – MISC.

KIRSCH SASH RODS

KIRSCH TENSION RODS

KIRSCH TRAVERSE RODS

WOOD HARDWARE

WROUGHT IRON HARDWARE

1400 PILLOW & DUVET INSERTS

DOWN FEATHER BEDS

DUVET INSERTS - DOWN

DUVET INSERTS - POLY

FOAM

PILLOW INSERTS - DOWN 10/90

PILLOW INSERTS - 100% DOWN

PILLOW INSERTS - DOWN 25/75

DOWN 50/50

SYNTHETIC

1500 INTERIOR DESIGN ITEMS

FLOORING

SEATING

WALLPAPER

1600 LININGS (Non-Inventory)

1700 MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTS (Non-Inventory)

1800 MARKUPS

1900 BUSINESS EXPENSES

UPFRONT DEPOSITS

SUBTOTAL

2000 DISCOUNTS