Streamline Your Billing with Contractor Invoicing Software for Businesses

Contractor invoicing software for businesses

[Music] hello hello if you're new here my name is elizabeth bose and i am a bookkeeper for construction business owners on this channel we explore the strategies and tools that help us run successful businesses and live happier more productive lives so in this video i'll be talking about quickbooks online and how you can use that software to help you run your construction business so the question that i get most often is can contractors use quickbooks online because you hear a lot about quickbooks desktop which is a great program as well you hear a lot about different project management software and so on so i would like to start by saying that quickbooks is one of the most popular accounting software options for a variety of different businesses and many construction businesses use it because of how easy it is to use it and the law costs and quickbooks online makes it easy to access your bookkeeping data and accounting reports from pretty much anywhere and stay up to date quickbooks online is the software that you can sync to pretty much any software out there that it can be connected to the accounting system and that is the most beautiful part of it i always say that desktop is a wonderful system for construction industry but at the same time for many contractors out there it's a little bit too much because it takes a lot of steps before you can complete a task but it also has a ton of different possibilities a ton of different systems within it to help you do different tasks when it comes to huge construction projects so today we will be focusing on quickbooks online and i would like to start talking about the features that can help you when using that program so number one feature is of course projects workbooks online didn't have that feature for a long time i think they came up with it in 2018 project is a wonderful feature that will help you track all the costs all the income your profit margin it will let you see all the transactions that have been associated with the project it will help you pull up the profit and loss statement that is just for uh that particular project and it's just a very easy way to use it to see all the numbers for all the projects and it's easy to create any estimates invoicing any sort of expenses right out of the project itself so when we are talking about expenses that's where the product and services come from so with this one it's very important to set up products and services correct from the beginning so then they go to the correct accounts when it's done the other option is just use the accounts and skip the products and services most of the time products and services are really good um to use when you're creating the estimate if you need a detailed and you want to send out detailed estimate or when you're integrating quickbooks online with some different project management software because that's where it's required to sync every single product and service so when you're creating the expense in quickbooks online you have several ways to track those expenses you can either input the category or you can input the items where your products and services are located so another helpful feature is 10.99 quickbooks online doesn't only help you track 10.99 but it also helps you file 10.99 online very easy after it's been tracked after all the information from w9s has been entered into the system it's very easy it just walks you step by step on how to get that done so another feature that is very important for contractors is estimating is it possible in quickbooks online yes definitely it is possible the markup feature is not as easy to use as it is in um desktop but there are many ways to actually get it done so that your customer wouldn't see your markup but it will be there will be a breakdown for you of the cost and the total with the markup and you can create that estimate right inside of the projects feature inside of quickbooks online and then out of that estimate you can do progress invoicing that's available in quickbooks online and you can even track the retainage by allocating the payment that you have already received and let's say the retainage has been held you will be able to track of how much percentage you still ought to receive so another helpful very helpful feature is receipts if you download quickbooks app on your phone and you will just use the capture feature on quickbooks online you will be able to take the any physical receipt that you have write the job name on it take a picture of it and then your bookkeeper your accountant will be able to job cost the whole thing there's also you can even take a picture of the screen when you receive an email and that's you know there are a lot of create creative ways to use that feature and that brings us to job costing every construction business should be used in job costing to calculate the income the expenses for each project and quickbooks online really makes it super easy to set up both customers and jobs enter all the information in different screens and you're done you can use receipts feature if you need someone else to enter it for you you can easily use projects if you create checks if you create expenses any sort of bills all of that can be put to the project and you can run the job costing reports really quickly to show you if the job is running over budget it can all even show you the reports such as budget versus actual your profit and loss reports by job your cash flow reports every time i hear someone saying that they're so functioning out of excel spreadsheet that's where i find it disturbing because excel spreadsheet doesn't really let them accumulate this information and use it for different reports to see how the business and all the jobs separately are functioning so quickbooks online is definitely going to provide that especially when construction companies are highly focused on their cash flow where they should be quick with software can quickly tell you where your money has gone and where your money is coming from that's a very very easy feature to use so the next very good feature is payroll you can run your payroll through quickbooks online and then it's a full service payroll that is very easy to set up you just follow the steps all the questions get answered inside of quickbooks and you are set up there are a couple challenges that come up but that's where your professionals are coming to help you and you can even use timesheets feature inside of coinbox online usually the best way to go is to use t-sheets to track your time which is the intuit program as well and things to quickbooks online but both payroll and t-shirts are super easy to use you just enter the time process the checks then either print them or send them reports are very clear and easy to understand you can pull up multiple reports on the payroll and all the taxes that are owed are paid straight out of your account they're calculated by quickbooks software so quickbooks makes it really easy to track time and then pay for that time to your employees so the next thing i would like to talk about is integrations integrations is one of the best features of quickbooks online any sort of software that you would like to use with your construction company is pretty much going to be syncing to quickbooks online it's you know this cloud computing is very very professional nowadays and with powerful tools integrated with each other it's just no matter how complicated it seems it's not it can be managed through very simple tool you know in the past there were millions of tools that we needed to use separately you had your estimated you had your payroll now it all integrates and you don't have to do double entries that's the beauty of the quickbooks online you can connect many many different software so when we're talking about integration and coming back to the payroll if you don't want to run payroll through quickbooks online the other part is that you can run it through adp through gusto you can run it through patriot there are a lot of really good companies out there and all of them are syncing to quickbooks online and when we're talking about time tracking there's also a lot of tools some of the best ones are t-sheets clock shark those are the software that your team can use and the information will flow to quickbooks online you just gotta make sure that you set everything up right and that it will flow correctly in and out another thing is of course project management software there's so many out there some of the best ones that i have been personally using with my clients is builder trend co-construct no wifi pro core and many others all of them are syncing to quickbooks online but the clincher here is that you have to have a person who knows what they're doing to help you connect those the right way so there's no double entry of the information another good software that you could sync to quickbooks online is the bill pay software something like melio or bill.com that would eliminate that double entry again you don't have to receive the bill in the mail then plug it into the quickbooks then plug it into another software or send it to your bookkeeper you don't have to you just do one thing and it just flows from one into the other for example one of the flow that i have going right now is that when i receive the bills from my clients i enter them into the builder trend and then builder trend throws automatically throws that information into quickbooks then from quite books that information flows into malio and from melio i am able to schedule the payments within minutes another kind of software you can connect receipts um softwares many people are using hotdog i wouldn't say i'm not a big fan of hotdog but i find that that very little amount of companies that really need to use that because quickbooks online already has that beautiful receipt feature maybe very huge companies that need to track that better that's where hopdock would sync to quickbooks online as well so the next thing i wanted to talk about is why you need help setting it up so software takes you through an interview process that is meant to make up setting up your initial company file as simple as possible but the problem is that every contractor is different and everyone runs their company differently so the best advice is to consult with an expert either as your bookkeeper your accountant your cpa someone who is experienced with quickbooks online and they can help you decide what your chart of accounts should look like what your products and services should be connected to and look like what should be the structure of your balance sheet and your other financial statements what is the integration between your project management software and your quickbooks online how does the flow go where does it flow out of and goes into because for example with builder trend some of the things will flow from builder trend into quickbooks but not the other way around so when you create an unqueuebox you would have to go into builder trend and create it again so the best way to go is to just go into builder trend and create it there from the beginning that would eliminate your double entry and you will also um need to help setting up the payroll and taxes and deductions and benefits to make sure that everything is calculated correctly but quickbooks does categorize all payroll burn expenses usually as an overhead expense you know you'll need to work with an expert to get these costs into the jobs where they belong right we're coming back to the job costing part of it so that's it for today please let me know in the comments what do you think about quickbooks online have you been using it have you considered switching but you are not sure if this is going to be a good system for you and don't forget to like this video if you found this information helpful and subscribe not to miss more of my content thank you 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