Using Classes in QuickBooks to track Income and Expense

[ELS Landscape]

I have a pretty good grip on QuickBooks but need to take it to the next level to more accurately track income and expenses. I would be interested in discussion on how to improve.

I am also willing to discuss any tips I have to assist others too.

[RodneyK]

Doesn't better tracking just come down to an expanded chart of accounts to track more of what you want to know? That combined with setting up individual jobs under a client and charging expenses and time against a specific job could tell you almost anything you would want to know. It can take you to figuring out profit and loss on a specific job and or client. Not sure what your looking to do...

[ELS Landscape]

I do job costing in QuickBooks Pro Contractor.
Classes are supposed to help track larger groups.
Some examples I have seen is tracking say different mowing crews or company divisions and such.

I might want to track squirt and fert income and expense seperate from my other operations and like wise I may want to track each truck. Not that I have a fleet of trucks but I want to get the system fine tuned more so I can make better choices. I also would want to allocate overhead recover differently for each operation based on their use.


There are a lot of different options which is why I was asking if someone was using this feature and how they set it up.

[NC Greenscaper]

Those are good questions? I could definitely see the application for breaking the expense out for different departments or crews. I would call a QB certified CPA and see what they say. I don't have the contractor edition but have qb premiur and I can't do or don't know how to do what you wish.

[White Gardens]

Check out your local Junior College. Sometimes they offer a one or two day class on quickbooks and other accounting software.


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[ELS Landscape]

Originally Posted by White Gardens

Check out your local Junior College. Sometimes they offer a one or two day class on quickbooks and other accounting software.


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I know how to do about anything in QuickBooks at this point in time. I am just courious how others might have set up classes to track their operations and generate reports.

I suspect I am going to set up

Irrigation
Maintenance
Treatment
General Labor
Landscape
Overhead

That way I can track each of these activities income and expenses and generate reports for each.

[ELS Landscape]

Originally Posted by NC Greenscaper

Those are good questions? I could definitely see the application for breaking the expense out for different departments or crews. I would call a QB certified CPA and see what they say. I don't have the contractor edition but have qb premiur and I can't do or don't know how to do what you wish.

I have Premier too, you should be able to set it to contractor edition.

I think I only need Pro, that is what I had in the past. I think the only differance is inventory which I do not use so next purchase should be just Pro or Pro plus if I want mobile built in.

[RodneyK]

I think your class list looks good. Overhead is an interesting choice. Makes sense on one hand but on another wouldn't you want to track overhead in each class itself such as irrigation. Could be that one of your revenue sources sucks up more overhead and rates should be raised? That is my only thought. I realize it would be difficult to split up overhead into each class.