Quicken For Contractors
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Introduction
Quicken is truly a good fit
for the construction office. If you are a
contractor, builder, or remodeler, you have much to
gain by using this software tool to help manage your
business finances. But Quicken has been created for
generic financial use, which means you have to
customize it to reflect the business practices
commonly used in the construction field. That's why
we've written this book and provided the
accompanying diskette-to give construction
professionals like you the tools to tailor Quicken
to your special needs.
Why You Should Buy This Book
Buying this book signals your
ongoing commitment to improve the management and
operation of your construction business.
Unless you're a contractor or
builder who has the good fortune of being the only
game in town, you're forced to cleat with the
realities of surviving and prospering in a
competitive marketplace. Tougher quality standards
and a smarter buying public place ever-increasing
demands on builders and contractors. It is this
competition that determines the price at which your
product or services will sell, not you. You do,
however, have a great deal of control over what it
costs to produce and deliver your product or
services. Controlling your costs through informed
and intelligent decision-making is the key to
maintaining profitability and protecting your
investment.
The most important tool you
can use to control your project costs is an
efficient job-costing system. Job costing provides a
way to track and report on the actual costs of a
construction project as it progresses. It also
allows you to compare your actual costs with your
estimated costs. The basis of an efficient
job-costing system is a well-designed, accurate,
computerized estimating program coupled with
financial management software that is properly
fitted to your business.
This book is a working model
for setting up such a system using Quicken. It is
written to help you get up and running quickly, and
to provide you with the vital controls that can make
the difference between success and failure in your
construction business. We've made every effort to
present this material in a straightforward and
easily understood manner, without using the usual
ledgerspeak and technobabble.
You don't have to spend a
great deal of time doing your bookkeeping; you just
have to spend the time well. This book will show you
how. You'll learn how to set up the program
correctly so that you can easily get meaningful
information from your reports. For example, we'll
show you how to set up jobs, job divisions (the
specific phases of a job, such as concrete, framing,
or site wiring), and job budgets (estimates). Then
we'll give you step-by-step instructions on how to
print a report that gives you the estimated versus
actual costs for each job, broken down by job
division, if needed. With this kind of help you'll
soon have control over your financial matters
without spending your life at the computer.
Quicken in Construction
Why use Quicken? We believe it
offers the best combination of power and simplicity
available today for the small-volume builder or
general contractor. The importance of simplicity
cannot be overstated.
What is Quicken? It's an
entry-level financial management software program
for Windows and Macintosh computers. Quicken is a
registered trademark of Intuit. It's a good
alternative to the mystery and complexity of
traditional accounting software. Instead of using
technical accounting jargon, Quicken uses terms that
you're familiar with. Its format is user-friendly
and straightforward. It allows you to work in a way
that is comfortable, familiar, and understandable.
Using Quicken to capture and calculate all your
daily transactions, including checks and deposits,
is much faster than entering and calculating
everything by hand. Quicken can summarize your
transactions, presenting them in reports and graphs
that give you a good idea of where you stand
financially. You can record your assets (equipment,
cash-in-bank, vehicles) and liabilities (truck and
construction loans, payroll taxes), as well as track
income, job costs, and overhead expenses. Quicken
gives you quick access to critical business
information that you never thought possible.
What Can I Expect to Learn
from This Book?
We've written this book
because we've watched builders struggle with their
bookkeeping and accounting systems. Even though
Quicken was written to be easy to use and
understand, the complexities of construction
accounting make this book necessary. If you follow
the setup procedures we've laid out in this book,
you can expect your bookkeeping and accounting
systems to give you back information that will make
your business more productive with less effort.
By following along with this
book, you'll learn:
- How to set up easily
manageable cash-basis categories and accounts in
Quicken.
- How to create, edit, and
use classes. (In Quicken, a new job or project
is set up as a class.)
- How to set up a simple
and effective job-costing system.
- How to create and use
budgets.
- How to create and
interpret reports that are designed to keep you
in touch with the vital signs of your business.
- How to process payroll.
- How to prepare interim
financial statements when required by a tender
or new supplier to determine your
creditworthiness.
- Tips and tricks for
getting the most out of Quicken.
If you're willing to make a
small but regular, disciplined investment of time
and effort to understand and apply the techniques
and methods covered in this book, you'll see
measurable and continuing improvement in your
accounting skills. In addition, you'll gain the
personal and financial rewards that come from
working not just harder, but smarter.
About the Authors
Karen Mitchell
has 15 years experience as a general contractor and
finance consultant. Her company, Online Accounting,
helps construction companies around the world
computerize their accounting using Quicken and
QuickBooks. Ms. Mitchell has an extensive background
in construction accounting, frequently publishes
articles on computerized business management in
leading construction publications, and, with Craig
Savage, co-authored the popular book Construction
Forms & Contracts.
Craig Savage
has been a general building contractor for over 25
years, and now does consulting as a specialist in
computer solutions for construction companies,
helping builders move beyond "shoebox or dashboard"
accounting to more organized and accurate systems
using Quicken or QuickBooks Pro. His concepts of
bookkeeping and job costing are easy to understand
and implement, and his step-by-step explanations
make setup and reporting simple. He has written
numerous articles for construction magazines, edits
two newsletters, and is associate editor for the
Journal of Light Construction. He is a regular
speaker at builder-oriented conventions and conducts
seminars dealing with construction management. He is
the author of Rim Carpentry Techniques and
co-author of Construction Forms & Contracts.
Jim Erwin
is a partner in several second-generation
family-owned construction companies in upstate New
York involved in land development, residential
construction, and light commercial construction. He
is an active member of the National Association of
Home Builders and has written articles on the use of
computers in construction for a variety of
construction magazines. Mr. Erwin is also the
creator of GC/Works, a full-featured software
solution for the construction industry that uses
Quicken or QuickBooks Pro as its basis.
Rex Underwood
is a general contractor, designer, programmer, and
journalist with 20 years experience in the
construction industry. He is the owner of the Rex
Underwood Design Group in Santa Barbara, California,
specializing in high-end custom residential and
light commercial construction. Rex is a writer and
associate editor of the Macintosh Construction
Forum, Construction Business Computing, and Rural
Builder Magazine, whose articles have enjoyed a
readership of over 400,000 people worldwide. His
speaking engagements, as well as his programming
efforts, focus on construction office software
integration and automation.
Introduction |
Table of Contents |
Back Cover
Paperback, 228 pages |
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