QuickBooks 2009 for Contractors

In this six-week course, you'll learn how to use the Premier Contractor Edition of QuickBooks 2009 effectively to meet the accounting needs of your contracting business and run it more efficiently. Contractors have many unique bookkeeping needs, so we've designed this course from the ground up specifically for the construction industry. The lessons are clearly illustrated and include step-by-step instructions in plain language, giving you hands-on practice with the features you're sure to use on a daily basis.

We'll discuss creating custom and professional-looking contract estimates and the different methods for billing your clients, including using the QuickBooks progress invoicing and job-costing features. You'll find out how to deal with tricky situations, like change orders and retainage requirements, and how to properly set up accounts, items, customers, and jobs. Along the way, you'll see how to avoid many of the big and often costly mistakes contractors commonly make with QuickBooks. Finally, we'll explore how specific transactions impact all of your various accounts and cover some techniques for protecting your business from fraud, preparing for tax time, and generating useful and dynamic reports.

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Scott Paxton.

Scott Paxton is a Certified Public Accountant and his background includes experience as a public accountant, a manager in the banking industry, an entrepreneur, and a college business instructor. He is a Certified QuickBooks Professional Advisor, and he has authored a QuickBooks workbook that focuses on implementing and troubleshooting the program.

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Requirements:

QuickBooks Premier 2009 for Windows , Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, or Vista, Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).

QuickBooks Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins. When installing the software, be sure to select the contractor's edition. QuickBooks Pro 2009 for Windows is acceptable for this course, but please be aware that the Pro version is missing certain features that are only available in the Contractor's Edition used in this course. The Macintosh, Simple-Start, and Online versions of QuickBooks are not supported in this course.

Syllabus:

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Week One

Wednesday - Lesson 01

Contracting businesses have many unique accounting and reporting needs. In this first lesson, you'll learn how to set and edit your general, accounting, tax, and time-tracking preferences to fit your particular company. We'll go on a brief tour of the QuickBooks 2009 Contractor Edition, and you'll learn how to create and manage company files and utilize the program's multi-user and mobility features.

Friday - Lesson 02

In this lesson, you'll learn the QuickBooks basics, like how to create and edit accounts in your company file. Then you'll see how you can modify company templates (estimates and invoices, for example) to track all kinds of valuable information. And you'll find out how working backward from certain reports can be the overriding factor in defining your file setup. Because not all contractors are the same, we'll also go over some of the major setup differences between a typical contractor, like a plumber or electrician, and a company that purchases and develops real estate as its main purpose.

Week Two

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Today we'll focus on the Items List, which is an extremely useful tool for contractors. Even though different types of contractors will set up their lists differently, there are some general guidelines you can follow to ensure that your list works effectively and efficiently. We'll also cover some tricks for cleaning up and organizing an existing Item List to better suit your needs.

Friday - Lesson 04

QuickBooks provides some great tools to assist you in tracking both revenues and expenses for each job you complete, and we'll go over them in today's lesson. Get ready to learn the first steps that will lead you into the estimating and invoicing phases of your business. You'll also find out how to use the Customer: Job List to create and edit Customers and Jobs.

Week Three

Wednesday - Lesson 05

One of the more powerful features that the Contractor Edition offers you is the ability to create project estimates. In this lesson, you'll learn how to create these estimates and transfer the information to an invoice. Next, you'll find out how to handle the different invoicing methods contractors often face, such as time and materials and progress invoicing, and you'll get an opportunity to enter a few sample invoices using the different methods.

Friday - Lesson 06

Wouldn't it be great if every project progressed exactly as you laid it out in the initial project estimate? Since this is rarely the case, the Contractor Edition gives you a few features to help you easily handle different situations. Today you'll learn the steps you need to follow to enter change orders and retainage. You'll find out how to properly apply customer payments to outstanding invoices. Making errors in applying payments can devastate your bookkeeping records, so we'll also explore some simple techniques you can follow to avoid these common problems.

Week Four

Wednesday - Lesson 07

There are many different methods for paying your bills in QuickBooks. In today's lesson, you'll learn the most basic methods for creating a new vendor and entering a check transaction. In addition, you'll see how you can use purchase order and bill-paying features to better track costs that are more common for contractors (such as materials and subcontractor costs). Finally, we'll take a quick tour through tracking credit card accounts.

Friday - Lesson 08

Today we'll discuss recording time entries and how you can transfer these entries to other locations in the program, such as invoices. Much like expenditures for materials and supplies, you'll see that you can break time entries down and assign them to a specific job or project. As long as you have the breakdowns available (on a time card, for instance), you'll be able to split the hours that your company spends on multiple jobs on the same day.

Week Five

Wednesday - Lesson 09

In this lesson, we'll focus on the key payroll issues that contractors face. For instance, you'll learn how to create payroll items as part of your job-costing system. We'll also discuss some techniques for filing workers' compensation reports. Finally, you'll gain an understanding of the process you need to follow to create a paycheck and pay your payroll taxes.

Friday - Lesson 10

The reporting features in the Contractor's Edition of QuickBooks are vast. In this lesson, you'll discover how to locate critical information for your business, and then how to generate some spectacular reports to help you to better manage day-to-day activities. You'll also gain a better understanding of the key financial statements, specifically the balance sheet and profit and loss reports.

Week Six

Wednesday - Lesson 11

We'll begin this lesson with a discussion of some simple but important month-end procedures, like reconciling accounts and printing reports. Next, you'll learn how to perform a few procedures to clean up your accounting file and prepare it for a new year. We'll also cover how to enter and use QuickBooks' powerful budgeting feature.

Friday - Lesson 12

In our final lesson, we'll go over simple steps you can take to reduce your risks and safeguard your business assets. You'll learn how to set up and restrict users to certain areas of the program, review an Audit Trail report, and set a closing date for the books. We'll explore some basic internal control principles, and you'll find out which reports you should place on your monthly reading list.

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