Chapter 16

Job Estimating, Billing, and Tracking

In This Chapter

arrow Turning on job costing and setting up jobs

arrow Creating estimates and estimate-based invoices

arrow Comparing budgeted, estimated, and actual job information

arrow Charging for time and out-of-pocket expenses

QuickBooks has a feature that’s very useful for business people – such as contractors, consultants, engineers, and architects – who do jobs or projects for their customers. QuickBooks has the capability to do simple project or job costing. This capability means that your business can create project or job estimates, track costs by project or job, and raise invoices by project or job.

In this short chapter, we describe the QuickBooks job costing feature. (Note: some features are not available in QuickBooks Pro and we’ll point this out where that’s the case.)

Turning On Job Costing

To turn on the job costing or estimating feature in QuickBooks, choose Edit⇒Preferences. Click the Jobs & Estimates icon on the left; click the Company Preferences tab; and then use the Do You Create Estimates? and Do You Do Progress Invoicing? radio ...

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