Quickbooks For Contractors

Nathan

Has anyone used Quickbooks for Contractors?
Is it worth the extra money?

Grumpy

Short answer: I heard all it;s added features are simply customized reports, letters and things you can do yoruself if you know how to customize qb. TRhat's second hand knoweldge though.

Ross

Intuit is Australian company. They have been around for some time now and are definitly here to stay. QB for contractors is a "lite" version with limited features.

QB Pro however gives you the whole box and dice with multi-user, including payroll if you have employees its handy. The software is very good in what it does and I can't see any competitors on the horizon. probably explains why MS have had several goes at aquiring it.

Short falls.
Well my biggest beef is the way it handles "items" or in real speak "your materials you are going to sell"
The seaching of your materials database really sucks. I developed a package for electrical/plumbing and building contractors about 10 years ago that kicks butt. It really worked well with a big database of say 120,000 items. You could search on manufacturer type, group type for example "power points" or you could search for a part number. Easy.

Thats my biggest beef with QB. Other than that it is a very nice piece of code.

Cheers
Ross.

Grumpy

Here: I hope this link works.

http://quickbooks.intuit.com/commerc...questid=108324

It is the intuit comparison page for the contractor editions. They seem to have a new one called Enterprise.

hatchet

I think I'll make an online accounting software that can be used through a pda.. and allow homeowners to login to check current costs.. would that be beneficial to anyone?

__________________
Rich
WIT Construction Co.
Superior MT Contractor

Grumpy

Actually Hatchet I'm working on a total CRM solution from start to fonish and that was a thought in the back of my mind. It would be developed in PHP as the rest of the program is PHP. I was also thinking of placing a public calendar on the web site so customers can go look at their job schedule.

Nathan

As long as it comes with a built in link to ContractorsChatRoom.com I'm all for it!

__________________
Nathan

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

hatchet

That's a good idea Grumpy. I vaguely remember something about that CRM program.. I believe the space is still available on biltright if you want to use it. haha.

__________________
Rich
WIT Construction Co.
Superior MT Contractor

Grumpy

Yeah hatchet. I've been building the skeleton offline. I will definely move it online soon! I still have the log in info unless you changed it.

hatchet

Nope.. it's all still the same. I've been waiting for someone to come up with a good method to use php to export to excel with full layout capabilities. I've been working on a couple ideas on how to do a cheaper construction management program like www.projecttalk.com (they charge 400 / million dollars annual volume). Some of the jobs we work on cost us 80k / year.

__________________
Rich
WIT Construction Co.
Superior MT Contractor

Grumpy

Hmm my advice is to lie

hatchet

Umm.. to lie about what?

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Rich
WIT Construction Co.
Superior MT Contractor

Grumpy

... about your sales volume to get a lower cost for the program.

hatchet

Oh.. haha. The thing is that the clients pay for it (some even use it). The downside is that in todays market something like 80k could price you out of a job. So we're trying to pass it off as a voluntary alternate so it's not included in our base bid. Then if they see the benefit we get a change order for it.
Where we get into trouble is the company says we use it no matter what so we end up paying for it anyway - we just don't tell the owner we are until they step up to pay for it. So I guess we're umm.. ahem.. lyi..umm.. hiding the truth.

__________________
Rich
WIT Construction Co.
Superior MT Contractor

hatchet

Well I've been working on this accounting thing. Currently I have an addaccount and addjob page setup - they work even. Essentially you start by adding a job and then fill it with accounts.
The job table keeps track of contact information of the client, the job phone, fax, etc.. budget, total to date paid from owner, total of prime change orders, etc..etc. Much the same in the account table.. additionally the accounts table tracks if it's a labor, material, or subcontractor cost.
I'm thinking about doing a production tracking module also so, along with a labor code, it can be used for estimating.
Right now it's just the forms - once I get a decent design with some editing and listing functions I'll let everyone see it.
One cool thing I've put into it is the ability to pull subcontractor #'s and job #'s from a pull down menu that gathers all the #'s from the database. Works pretty slick.

__________________
Rich
WIT Construction Co.
Superior MT Contractor

orto

Orginal question;
Found no benefit for QB for contractors.
QB Pro manages a business well.
QB Cont, = another way to get us dummys to pay fer something that is not complete

tncontractor

I bought the book Contractor's Guide to QuickBooks Pro 2003. It has a sample company that you can use that is supposed to save several hours of setup time.

hatchet

When I'm done with my accounting webware you can all have a discounted copy to help me debug it.. haha. Well it's not really a copy.. because I'll be hosting it on my server.

__________________
Rich
WIT Construction Co.
Superior MT Contractor

nails

nathan and hatchet, is "grumpy" always so grumpy?

hatchet

Nope.. sometimes he's really grumpy. haha.

__________________
Rich
WIT Construction Co.
Superior MT Contractor