QuickBooks 2014 Job Costing offers a number of new features that
people should like. Many of them are found in all versions of
QuickBooks, a few are limited to Enterprise. I’m going to run through
this VERY quickly, as I’m not a job costing expert and the true impact
of these changes aren’t always obvious to me. Feel free to fill in the
gaps for me in comments!
In all versions you will see:
That is interesting, where will this be used? I’ll be honest, at this point I’m not 100% sure where it will be used in Pro and Premier. I can see how it is used in Enterprise, which I’ll describe below.
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Why would we want to? From a job costing standpoint this now allows you to set the sales rep to these expense kinds of transactions. Prior to this the sales rep could only be assigned to the revenue kinds of transactions, so if you tried to filter a report by sales rep you wouldn’t see all sides of the job. However, I think this will only work if you create NEW transactions with these modified forms (or, if you go back to edit existing transactions, which would be a pain). And, since this is only implemented in Enterprise, I’m not sure why some of the other sales rep changes were implemented in Pro and Premier?
So, for checks, bills and credit card charges Enterprise V14 gives us the ability to add a sales rep delete) column to the detail section of the form on screen. This has no effect on the printed form (such as a printed check).
Here’s a standard check, looking at the Items tab. If you right-click on the form you get a popup menu – there is a new option at the bottom, Customize Columns.
Selecting that new option, you get a typical QuickBooks customization dialog. On the left you’ll see Sales Rep, which you can now add to the form.
Here you can see that I’ve added sales rep as a column. When I select the Job in the Customer:Job column, the default sales rep fills in from that record.
I’ll go into this feature in a bit more detail in an upcoming article.
The important thing to note here is that now I have associated a sales rep with this expense kind of transaction, something we couldn’t do before. So if I am filtering my Job Cost reports, or financial reports, by sales rep, these transaction types are now included. This is a MAJOR PLUS for businesses who use job costing (but, again, this only happens in Enterprise).
Now, rather than using the Class feature to define your job reports, as well as your financial reports, you can use the already existing Sales Rep record. This will be a help to many businesses.
In this report you can double click to drill down on the Est Cost, Act Cost and Committed Cost values.
Here’s what you get if you drill down on the Committed Costs value in the “Remodel Bathroom” job in the report above:
Unfortunately you cannot drill down on the unpaid wages column. The value shown in for this value in the report is an estimate, because it is very difficult to come up with a dollar amount for unpaid wages in a system like QuickBooks. That column should calculate as follows:
Here’s a salaried employee. The annual salary is $51,500.00 (the payroll item that I used is set to be a “Yearly Salary” type), so based on the normal hours for a year of 2060 should give you an hourly rate of $25.00.
I’ll enter a time card for a job. 40 hours at $25.00 per hour estimate should work out to be $1,000.00 of unpaid wages.
The report is only showing $23.52 for unpaid wages – this is not what I would have expected here. Then again, this is the R1 release, we can’t expect it to work correctly in all cases.
Also note that in the report I show above, I set a filter to just
show the VIP Summit job – but other jobs/customers are listed (such as
Anderson Wedding Planners). The values are all set to zero, but they
still are listed, which isn’t what I was hoping for.
If this report is working correctly (I still have to evaluate this in detail), the % Complete should be Actual Cost / Estimated Cost. Then Earned Revenue should be Estimated Revenue / % Complete. From some very simple early testing this seems to be working, although there are some small differences due to rounding issues (which shouldn’t be a problem for this kind of report).
Knowing Earned Revenue is important for any company that reviews financials on percentage of completion. This is something that no report in QuickBooks was able to do before now.
Note that this report does not give you the option to be run on cash basis. That is good, you shouldn’t, but if you are running another report (such as the Profit & Loss by Job) on cash basis, the reports won’t match. It could be confusing.
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source: http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2013/09/quickbooks-2014-job-costing-improvements/
In all versions you will see:
- Sales Reps on Jobs: You can specify a sales rep for a job.
- Job Status Filter: You can filter many reports by job status.
- There are two additional job costing reports: Job WIP Summary and Committed Cost by Jobs.
- You can add Sales Rep as a column in the detail section of Checks, Bills and Credit Card Charges.
QuickBooks 2014 Job Costing – Sales Reps
There are a number of changes that relate to Sales Reps and Job Costing, and some of the changes only exist in Enterprise. I’m a bit unsure about the impact of SOME of these changes when working with Pro and Premier, though.Sales Rep on Job Record
First, we can now add the sales rep to the job record. We’ve had the ability to specify a Rep (Sales Rep) in the Customer record for awhile. QuickBooks 2014 extends this by making the Rep field available in Job records as well. This is available in all versions.
That is interesting, where will this be used? I’ll be honest, at this point I’m not 100% sure where it will be used in Pro and Premier. I can see how it is used in Enterprise, which I’ll describe below.
Click on the image to get yours if you are ready
Sales Rep on Checks, Bills and Credit Card Charges
Let’s take a look at a Sales Rep feature that is changed only in QuickBooks Enterprise V14, which has an impact on Job Costing. In this release, we now have the ability add the sales rep to the on-screen transaction form for checks, bills and credit card charges.Why would we want to? From a job costing standpoint this now allows you to set the sales rep to these expense kinds of transactions. Prior to this the sales rep could only be assigned to the revenue kinds of transactions, so if you tried to filter a report by sales rep you wouldn’t see all sides of the job. However, I think this will only work if you create NEW transactions with these modified forms (or, if you go back to edit existing transactions, which would be a pain). And, since this is only implemented in Enterprise, I’m not sure why some of the other sales rep changes were implemented in Pro and Premier?
So, for checks, bills and credit card charges Enterprise V14 gives us the ability to add a sales rep delete) column to the detail section of the form on screen. This has no effect on the printed form (such as a printed check).
Here’s a standard check, looking at the Items tab. If you right-click on the form you get a popup menu – there is a new option at the bottom, Customize Columns.
Selecting that new option, you get a typical QuickBooks customization dialog. On the left you’ll see Sales Rep, which you can now add to the form.
Here you can see that I’ve added sales rep as a column. When I select the Job in the Customer:Job column, the default sales rep fills in from that record.
I’ll go into this feature in a bit more detail in an upcoming article.
The important thing to note here is that now I have associated a sales rep with this expense kind of transaction, something we couldn’t do before. So if I am filtering my Job Cost reports, or financial reports, by sales rep, these transaction types are now included. This is a MAJOR PLUS for businesses who use job costing (but, again, this only happens in Enterprise).
Now, rather than using the Class feature to define your job reports, as well as your financial reports, you can use the already existing Sales Rep record. This will be a help to many businesses.
Job Status Report Filter
It seems like a simple change, but it will have a BIG impact on job costing reports. QuickBooks now has the ability to filter job costing reports by job status. It seems like such a simple change, I don’t know why the haven’t done this before? This is available in all versions.
Enterprise Job Cost Reports
In addition to the ability to add the sales rep to expense transactions as I talked about above, Enterprise has two new reports: Committed Cost by Job and Job WIP Summary.Committed Cost by Job
The Committed Cost by Job report fills a gap in QuickBooks that people have had to fill by going to other software products before now. This report factors in the balances from open Purchase Orders as well as “unpaid wages” – time that you have on timecards but haven’t paid with a payroll check. The report takes your budget and subtracts actual costs, costs committed on purchase orders, and costs committed on time cards, to give you your variance.
In this report you can double click to drill down on the Est Cost, Act Cost and Committed Cost values.
Here’s what you get if you drill down on the Committed Costs value in the “Remodel Bathroom” job in the report above:
Unfortunately you cannot drill down on the unpaid wages column. The value shown in for this value in the report is an estimate, because it is very difficult to come up with a dollar amount for unpaid wages in a system like QuickBooks. That column should calculate as follows:
- Hourly Employees: Hours spent on a job by each employee X that employee’s first payroll item. Labor burden (such as taxes, etc.) are not included.
- Salaried Employees: Hourly wages = yearly salary / 52 weeks / 40 hours.
Here’s a salaried employee. The annual salary is $51,500.00 (the payroll item that I used is set to be a “Yearly Salary” type), so based on the normal hours for a year of 2060 should give you an hourly rate of $25.00.
Job WIP Summary
The Job WIP Summary report is important for those businesses that prepare financials based on percentage of completion. You can see the % Complete value, as well as a comparison of estimated, earned and actual revenue.
If this report is working correctly (I still have to evaluate this in detail), the % Complete should be Actual Cost / Estimated Cost. Then Earned Revenue should be Estimated Revenue / % Complete. From some very simple early testing this seems to be working, although there are some small differences due to rounding issues (which shouldn’t be a problem for this kind of report).
Knowing Earned Revenue is important for any company that reviews financials on percentage of completion. This is something that no report in QuickBooks was able to do before now.
Note that this report does not give you the option to be run on cash basis. That is good, you shouldn’t, but if you are running another report (such as the Profit & Loss by Job) on cash basis, the reports won’t match. It could be confusing.
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Conclusion
The changes for Pro/Premier users aren’t all that significant – pretty much just the job status filter. I don’t see the sales rep on job feature being very useful by itself. The improvements or QuickBooks Enterprise are a big improvement, but as you can see there are some things that need to be worked out in the R1 release. No surprise there, this is an example of why I always recommend that you wait for a later revision before using the new product each year.source: http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2013/09/quickbooks-2014-job-costing-improvements/
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