Hello! New to any kind of forums. I am doing accounting for a General Contractor who builds 3 to 4 single family homes a year for homeowners with their own funds and I don't know how to go about keeping track of bills from the subcontractors or supply companies. I would like to enter them into QB, but most of them are being compensated from the Title company and the construction loan is the homeowner's, not the GC's. So I only enter my GC's direct expenses. With that there are a couple of issues I have:
*I lose track of whom I owe and how much, etc. especially when there are a few projects going on
*I don't have the idea of the current total expense, unless I add QB GC expenses and the title company pay outs manually, e.g. in excel which I have to update whenever there are new expenses, which is even a greater hassle and I am never sure if I entered/retyped everything from QB, and I have to do it for every house, but it doesn't make sense, because I need the total cost information to be available at least weekly, and it looks that I am doing the work twice for each project and the only info I am sure about is the one that I have in my QB, not the combination of QB and manual entry. Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Let's start here: "who builds 3 to 4 single family homes a year for homeowners with their own funds"
It's from the GC bank. It's always the GC funds.
"and I don't know how to go about keeping track of bills from the subcontractors or supply companies."
You need to understand your process. Example: You hire the subs, you submit proof of the Costs to pay, and the bank or title company pays the subs per your approvals, using the Homeowner's Construction Loan. This means your entry of the bills are handled as Other Current Asset, as Billable. Then, you invoice the title company along with the details. They send back proof they paid, and you enter this as Payment against the "reimbursement" invoice you created. The easiest way to do all of this is with a Bank type of account named "Construction Clearing." And everything you enter as spent, from that Bank type of account as Write Check, is done using a Single-sided Item linked to one CIP (construction in progress) Other Asset account. You enter the details on the Items tab as Billable to the customer project name. You invoice using the Add Time & Costs button, and this is what you send to the title company. This also Clears out the Other Asset account. You get the notice of total paid out, and you "receive" the payment against the invoice and "deposit" to that Clearing Bank. Now it is $0, in theory, as it just offset what you had entered you incurred (but never actually paid for, directly).
"I would like to enter them into QB, but most of them are being compensated from the Title company and the construction loan is the homeowner's, not the GC's. So I only enter my GC's direct expenses."
You can enter Both types of activities.
"With that there are a couple of issues I have:
*I lose track of whom I owe and how much, etc. especially when there are a few projects going on"
Always Job Track the split details on the Items tab of the checks.
"I don't have the idea of the current total expense, unless I add QB GC expenses and the title company pay outs manually, e.g. in excel which I have to update whenever there are new expenses,"
This is why you don't use the Expenses tab for the entries. Instead of a financial report (P&L), you want to run Job Reports. Job Cost reports can be filtered, for instance, on the CIP account only.
You want to use the Job Tracking and reporting tools, not rely on the Financial reports for this.
Thank you. I will Try to understand and start changes and see how it turns out. I will have questions going forward, so I will ask you for help later, if that's ok. Thanks for now!
Hello , Hello!
I was able to do handle the bill entry as you suggested. Thanks again. I only worked with two bills so far. Now, before I go any further, I am looking for a report that I could run to see the job cost totals. I can't find any. I am worried that I won't be able to run a report that would allow me to see the total cost of direct expenses I already have, plus the ones I entered from title company. I am a little confused about the reporting.
* What reports do I have to pull to be able to see that? With the money coming straight to my GC checking account plus the "virtual" money paid from title company and the cost entered I thought I should be able to see some kind of totals of cost or profit/loss somewhere.
What I am doing here now will not show on P&L and I knew that , but where does it show,and the expenses I already had before (all are job assigned) will. What do I do ?
I run QB Pro Desktop. Do I need a more advanced version? I already saw that I won't be able to generate Expenses by Vendor with Job Filter, where I was hoping I could see something. Or can I stick with my QB Pro Desktop. Can you help?
PS. There is one thing you said about " It's from the GC bank. It's always the GC funds." Can you explain what you mean? Even when GC's client (homeowner) signed a loan with the bank and is incurring all cost with that , it is GC Bank and GC Funds? I am not that savvy. Thanks!
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