Question

Accounting for construction projects

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
September 17, 2021
3 replies
21 views

Hello community,

I am new to quickbooks and have no real training with accounting. I've started helping my husband keep track of his contact work. He has a few different construction contracts with different people, and I should mention we live in Costa Rica so I am not handling the tax portion of these projects just tracking the money in and money out. Previously I was just using spreadsheets but decided to upgrade to quickbooks thinking it would make my life easier, I'm not sure if I was correct in that thinking, so far it's become more complicated and left me more confused.

How we've been running this jobs is the Client will weekly, or as needed, send a lump sum of money for all the expenses. I track all receipts and costs of labor in quickbooks and then at the end up the week send them amount that is either left in there 'account' or needed to pay. Quickbooks is working ok for me to be able to keep track, and I like that I can keep track of all the receipts by uploading photos.

The problem I'm having is when it comes to sending the client their account balance I need to export everything to excel and then create an excel sheet to represent their account for them, and have to re-do this every time because there's no easy way for me to send it through quickbooks. I create an invoice every day for the expenses, so I generate a lot of invoices. It doesn't really make sense to send each invoice because there are so many. I've been exporting the transaction list to excell and then making an excel sheet that adds up there payments and balance.

Does anyone of suggestion to make my life easier with this? Should I not be using invoices to track the expenses? I also use different customers to differentiate between different projects of the same customer. For example everything that is an expense but not part of the construction I have as a different customer. When I go to run a report at the end of the week I want it too sum all the expenses for my customer and then compare it to the money received and the total budget of the project.

QuickBooks Online

MariaSoledadG

QuickBooks Team

Allow me to share a few information about exporting the transactions and running reports and guide you on the best thing to do, Elena StClair.

An invoice is a time-stamped commercial document that itemizes and records a transaction between a buyer and a seller. If goods or services were purchased on credit, the invoice usually specifies the terms of the deal and provides information on the available methods of payment. If you're tracking an expense, you'll want to use bills instead.

Also, you can use the projects feature to track different projects of the same customer. Please know that this is available in QuickBooks Online Plus, Advanced, and Accountant. Apart from this, when running reports, since you're already exporting them to excel, you can consolidate them into one report on the Excel file so you can easily compare the information. This way, it would show all the total expenses, money received and the total budget of a project.

To make sure that everything is organized on your customers' and vendors' transactions, you can use classes. Please go through this article for your guide: Create And Manage Classes in QuickBooks Online.

Reach out to us if you have any concerns about tracking your expense. I'll be right here to help you.

E

Elena StClair Author

Should I track everything as a bill or an expense? Is there anyway to convert the invoices i´ve created into bills?

katherinejoyceO

Level 9

Thanks for coming back, @Elena11_2 StClair. The option to convert an invoice into a bill is currently unavailable. To ensure that the entries are properly tracked, you'll need to create two different transactions.

Additionally, we enter Bill if the transaction is to be paid at a later time. If it's to be paid immediately, we create a Check or Expense.

Read through this article for more insights about the difference between bills, checks, and expenses in QuickBooks Online.

Check out this post to know more about recording billable expenses in QuickBooks Online for future reference.

Come back here if you have any further questions. I'll be here to assist you immediately.

Fiat Lux - ASIA

Level 14

@Elena StClair

Are you using QB Online Global version for Costa Rica or QB Online US version?

Consider having a construction management app to integrate with your QB Online account.

J

john675645

You’re on the right path using QuickBooks, but construction accounting can get tricky with multiple jobs and client payments. Instead of daily invoices, try using Projects in QuickBooks — it tracks expenses, payments, and balances automatically. If setup feels confusing, experts like Ledger Labs can help customize QuickBooks for construction workflows and simplify your reporting.

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