QuickBooks 2016 All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 5

Setting Up Project and Job Costing Systems

In This Chapter

• Setting up jobs and projects
• Accounting for job and project costs
• Finding alternative ways to do job costing
• Using estimates
• Figuring out progress billing

Many businesses work on projects or jobs. For example, one way to look at a home builder’s business is as a series of home construction projects. A manufacturer, such as a commercial printer, may print books, brochures, or posters for its customers. Each of those items represents jobs that are performed for specific customers.

Accounting may work a bit differently when a firm organizes its work into projects or jobs. In some situations, a firm needs to track revenues and expenses — not just by a standard chart of accounts, but also by jobs or projects. Fortunately, QuickBooks makes job costing, or project costing, pretty darn easy. In this chapter, I talk about the tools that QuickBooks provides.

Setting Up a QuickBooks Job

To set up a QuickBooks job, choose the Customers ⇒ Customer Center command. QuickBooks displays the Customer Center window, shown in Figure 5-1.

Figure 5-1: The Customer Center window.

To set up a job for a particular customer, right-click the customer and choose the Add Job menu command from the shortcut menu. When you do so, QuickBooks displays the New Job window, shown in Figure 5-2.

Figure 5-2: The Address Info tab of the New ...