How to Use QuickBooks for Job Costing: Understanding Job Cost Reports

QuickBooks offers a plethora of standard job costing reports designed to give you the information
 you need to manage your customer and jobs.  Some of these reports are only found in the Contractors
 and Accountants editions, but many are available in other versions of QuickBooks as well.

This is the fourth of a four-part series about how to use QuickBooks for job costing.  Intuit, the
 creators of QuickBooks, has also asked me to present a series of free Small Business Town Hall 
covering the same topics every Tuesday this month.  This is your chance to get your job costing
 questions answered live.   

Jobs & Profitability Reports: 

These reports can be found in Pro, Premier and Enterprise in Reports > Jobs, Time & Mileage.  

Job Profitability Summary - This report summarizes how much profit your company has made 
from each customer. 

Job Profitability Detail - This report drills down to the detailed costs and revenues for each job 
phase you billed to the selected customer or job, so you can see which parts of the job were 
profitable and which parts were not.

Item Profitability - This report summarizes how much profit you have made from each item or 
job phase you sell. 

Profit & Loss by Job - This report shows how much profit you are making or losing on each job. 

Unbilled Costs by Job - This report lists the costs you assigned to a specific customer or job but 
have not yet billed as reimbursable expenses. 

Job Estimates Reports:

These reports can be found in Pro, Premier and Enterprise in Reports > Jobs, Time & Mileage.  

Job Estimates vs. Actuals Summary - This report summarizes how accurately your company 
estimated job-related costs and revenues. The report summarizes estimated to actual costs and
 estimated to actual revenue for all customers. 

Job Estimates vs. Actuals Detail - This report drills down to the detailed costs and revenues for
 the selected customer or job. It compares estimated to actual costs and estimated to actual 
revenue for each job phase you billed.  That way, you can see which parts of the job you estimated
 accurately and which parts you did not.

Job Progress Invoices vs. Estimates - This report compares each estimate with progress invoices
 based on the estimate. For each customer or job, this report shows whether or not the estimate is
 active, the estimate total, the total invoiced from the estimate on progress invoices, and the 
percentage of the estimate already invoiced on progress invoices. 

Item Estimates vs. Actuals - This report summarizes how accurately your company estimated 
costs and revenues for the items and job phases you sell. The report summarizes estimated to 
actual cost and estimated to actual revenue for all your items.

Estimates by Job - This report lists all active estimates assigned to a customer or job.

Open Purchase Orders by Job - This report shows the remaining purchase order line items 
that have not been received and their expected delivery date for each customer or job. 

Job Costs & Bills Reports:

These reports can only be found in the Contractors and Accountants editions of QuickBooks.  
Some of them are also available in the Professional Services edition.  

Costs to Complete by Job Summary - Once you enter how far along each of your jobs are, this 
report summarizes the cost to complete each of your jobs that have active estimates. It also 
shows how far you are over or under your estimate.

Costs to Complete by Job Detail - This report drills down to the detailed estimated cost by phase 
to complete the selected customer or job, and how far you are over or under your estimate. 

Job Costs by Vendor and Job Summary - This report lists the job-related expenses you have 
incurred for each job, subtotaled by vendor. 

Job Costs by Vendor and Detail - This report shows a detailed list of all the job-related expenses 
you have incurred for each vendor, subtotaled by job. 

Job Costs Job and Vendor Summary - This report lists the job-related expenses you have incurred 
for each vendor, subtotaled by job. 

Job Costs Job and Vendor Detail - This report shows a detailed list of all the job-related expenses 
you have incurred for each vendor, subtotaled by job. 

Job Costs Detail - This report lists the expenses you have incurred for each job. This report is 
useful if you need to break out all material supplier purchases, all subcontractors bills, and all 
the labor costs for each job. 

Unpaid Bills by Job - This report lists the bills you have not yet paid, sorted by customers 
and jobs. It lists only bills with an associated customer or job. This report is useful if you 
wait to pay vendor bills for a specific job when you receive a payment from the customer. 

Unpaid Job Bills by Vendor - This report shows all bills you have not yet paid, sorted by 
vendor or subcontractor, and lists any customer or job associated with each item on the bill. 

Expenses Not Assigned to Jobs - This report lists expenses that you have not assigned to a 
customer or job, totaled by vendor. Use this report to help identify costs that you may have 
forgotten to pass along to your customers. 

Job Status - This report lists information for each active customer and job. 


Customizing Reports:

One of the wonderful things about QuickBooks is how easy it is to customize reports and then
 memorize them for future use.  At the top of each report is a Modify Report button.  Here, you 
can change the way it looks as well as move, sort and subtotal the data in it.  

An even more powerful feature is report filtering.  Each filter represents a specific way you can 
restrict the scope of the report. When you select a filter, QuickBooks displays fields for you to
 fill in. The fields ask for information that QuickBooks needs to know to apply the filter to the report.

Once you have a particular report customized just the way you want, you can easily memorize it 
for future use by clicking the Memorize button.

Ruth Perryman - About the Author:

Ruth Perryman, MBA, CMA, CFE is the president of the QuickBooks Specialists, 
an Intuit Solutions Provider that was recently named Intuit's top seller for the 
western region and has provided QuickBooks help to thousands of businesses 
all over the world since 1996. She is an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor 
and a member of Intuit's Trainer/Writer Network. She is also certified in QuickBooks Point of Sale 
and QuickBooks Enterprise.

Free version of QuickBooks Point of Sale v10 now available! Plus get a $500 ACH rebate once 
you're approved for a new POS merchant account through us.  Call 800-707-0940 for details.