Pretty much exactly what Overanalyze said. I don't do estimates or Scopes through QB but it's really helpful for project and long term analysis to have your item categories line up with your estimating categories. Even if you use separate software for your estimates you can just print out a job/item report and manually check it against your estimate.
The other big benefit is that it allows you to examine your profit centers at the end of a period. Some areas of projects are your real cash cows and you want to make sure you are doing as much of that as possible. I'm always blown away by how much time I actually spend just cleaning up. I hired a real laborer this year because I figured that, even if I only get a good 4 hours of work out of him in a day, it saves me a good chunk of money.
Check out this product.
http://www.powertoolssoftware.com/index.html
This guy put in a lot of effort and built a great item list and corresponding chart of accounts. I installed it when I was setting up QB a couple years ago and have never looked back. It is scalable no matter what size operation you run. In fact today I enabled a couple new items that I had hidden. It also has nice invoice temples and customized reports. It brings out the power of quickbooks and let's you focus on building projects not item lists.
Every Item is a line on a quote in QB. When you create the Invoice those line items are transferred to the invoice. I don't do line item quotes or invoices, for the most part. So I only have maybe 50 or so line items and use only a handful now. If I am remodeling a bathroom, I use "Bathroom" as my line item for the entire project.
I will make notes on the Quote that I edit out of the Invoice (such as line item pricing), but everything that relates to that remodel goes pretty much on one line item.
I have a hard enough time keeping up my accounts in QB let alone tracking all of that at this point. Maybe some day down the road when I have some help in the office I will start tracking that info, but for now I would suggest just making some main items and a few sub-items off of those. And keep the numbering system intact. It's a great way to keep track of different categories.
As an example, my exterior work starts at 0100, interior 0200 and so on.
Example:
0110 Doors & Trim
0210 Doors & Trim
So at an glance I know that 0110 is an exterior door and 0210 is interior.
That's how I do it and it's getting me by for now.
How do you handle figuring up your estimates with the numbers that you just use for yourself? I'm talking about the finer details of the job -- x number of 2x4's -- x boxes of fasteners -- etc.
It would be nice if quickbooks let you itemize things for your quote and then collapse it into general lines for the customer...
That works be neat but far too time consuming to prepare prices. You will realize quickly how finding a fast method to quote is more important than accounting for every screw.
I'm just talking about using quickbooks for estimates and having more info for labor and material.
Your "more info" will come as you pay bills and record them into the specific cost code (list item). When you run job cost or profitability reports you'll get that "more info" for a tighter bid on the next job.
As for estimating, QB sucks, and a well developed (happens over time, trial & error) excel spreadsheet well work best. Use these same cost codes in your excel estimate as QB and you can easily compare.
Although, I build my estimates in excel, I put the final job price in QB as an estimate and give that to the client. If I win the job, I convert the estimate to an invoices (QB does this for you) and bill of of that.
PS- that Powertool download takes a little finageling to fit it to your needs, but it will be far more powerful than building your own from scratch.
I don't track every item. At the end of the job I just need to know how it came in on material and labor. Typically if one of these comes in under or over in a significant amount it's pretty obvious the cause.
I bid all my stuff in excel. I can't really use quickbooks for this since I have lots of modifiers that affect my unit costs. Height, distance, difficulty, etc.
I break my overhead/expenses down though. I'll enter money I included in the quote for bad debt, warranty, fuel, etc into quickbooks from each job. All the expenses get consumed off every job.
I can run a report at any moment and see how much marketing money I have to spend or how much I have for small tools. Makes controlling your cash flow much easier.
How do you handle figuring up your estimates with the numbers that you just use for yourself? I'm talking about the finer details of the job -- x number of 2x4's -- x boxes of fasteners -- etc.
It would be nice if quickbooks let you itemize things for your quote and then collapse it into general lines for the customer...