| QuickBooks Pro can save you hours of time in preparing your taxes. But setting up the new 2005 QuickBooks Pro can be complex and time-consuming. Contractor's Guide to QuickBooks Pro 2005 can save hours of time in setting up and putting to use all the new features that this 2005 edition offers. QuickBooks Pro isn't just for taxes. You can use it for payroll, keeping track of your vendors and subs - even job costing (comparing your estimated costs to your actual costs and finding out where you're making and losing money.) If you'd rather be building homes than burning the midnight oil trying to balance your books, you should have this new book. It includes a CD-ROM with a template for a construction company to help speed your set up, an estimating program with a 5000-item database, a program that converts your estimates into QuickBooks forms so you can compare with your actual costs, and blank construction forms for your use.
From the Back Cover
According to a recent national survey, more construction contractors use QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks than all other accounting programs combined. And for good reason. QuickBooks Pro excels at all the routine paperwork in a construction office: writing checks, keeping track of your bank balance, sending out invoices and statements, creating up-to-the-minute profit and loss statements for the month, year or by job, writing payroll checks, paying suppliers and subcontractors, tracking job costs, comparing estimated and actual costs for each job, and much more.
But there's a lot to learn in QuickBooks Pro. And converting to a new accounting system can be a complex and confusing task, even if you have a strong background in accounting and plenty of time to install the new system. That's why this book was written - because most construction pros aren't accounting experts and have more important work to do at the job site.
Contractor's Guide to QuickBooks Pro 2005 will walk you step-by-step through QuickBooks Pro's detailed setup procedure and then explain item-by-item how you should be using QuickBooks Pro every day. In days, rather than weeks, you'll create a first-rate accounting system that's an asset to your company.
Here you'll find simple, well-illustrated instructions for customizing the setup for QuickBooks Pro 2005, including what each screen on your monitor should look like. This manual explains every choice you need to make and every button you need to click on. And it tells you how to get a trial version of QuickBooks Pro if you want to try it before buying, and includes two other programs you'll want to use when estimating costs with QuickBooks Pro. Here's what's on the CD in the back of this manual:
- A QuickBooks Pro 2005 file preconfigured for a construction company. The file has a chart of accounts already entered, plus a complete set of memorized reports. Just plug in your own company data - vendors, subs, customers, etc. And at the click of a mouse, you have all the information needed to run your jobs.
- National Estimator - an easy-to-use estimating program with more than 100 pages of construction cost estimating data for general contractors. Dozens of other databases are available. (QuickBooks Pro doesn't come with any estimating data.)
- Job Cost Wizard - converts your National Estimator estimates into QuickBooks Pro estimates so you can create and send invoices, track job costs (charge every check to a cost category in your estimate) and compare actual and estimated costs. You'll know exactly where you made and lost money on every job.
- Blank construction forms you can open on your computer (with nearly any of the popular word processing programs), customize, fill out, print and send to customers and subcontractors.
With this book, the other programs included in this package, and QuickBooks Pro 2005, you have at your fingertips all the financial tools needed to keep a company running strong and in the black.
About the Authors
Karen Mitchell, Craig Savage and Jim Erwin are contractors, accountants and QuickBooks Pro experts. They've spent years studying and simplifying the installation of QuickBooks Pro in construction offices. Karen, Craig and Jim tour the country giving accounting seminars to professional groups, consulting with individual contractors and actually setting up QuickBooks Pro accounting systems for builders. They'll help you get excellent results with QuickBooks Pro the same way they've helped hundreds of other construction professionals.
Table of Contents
Introduction. 1 Setting Up Your QuickBooks Pro Company. 2 How to Set QuickBooks Pro Preferences. 3 Chart of Accounts. 4 Items. 5 Payroll Items. 6 Classes. 7 Customers and Jobs. 8 Vendors and Subcontractors. 9 Employees. 10 Opening Balances. 11 Organizing Work Flow. 12 Estimating. 13 Receivables. 14 Payables. 15 Payroll. 16 Using QuickBooks Pro on a Cash Basis. 17 Reports.
18 End of Month and End of Year Procedures. 19 Real Estate Development. Appendix A Estimating with QuickBooks Pro. Appendix B Job Cost Tracking and Importing Estimates. Index. |
