Regardless of the size of your business and the industry you are in, it will definitely have its own accounting needs. However, there are several difficulties that people in the construction business face when accounting. For example, it can be hard to record the billing details, labor costs and production levels because their work is usually project-based. As such, every project is different in its own way with different inputs and outputs. Furthermore, they might not have stipulated time frames because of the evolving nature of the projects. This is why if your business is in the construction industry, you should consider visiting a trusted reseller of QuickBooks for accounting solutions. The following sections will describe the best QuickBooks Enterprise features for construction businesses.
Industry Specific
It doesn’t really matter if you are in the construction industry or hospitality industry. The fact is that QuickBooks Enterprise is industry specific because of the advanced reporting (QBAR). This enables users to specifically curate their financial reports that are most relevant to business operations. QBAR consists of more than 140 starter reports that are easy to navigate and saves a great deal of time. Contractors have found great success with QuickBooks Enterprise when it comes to things like the total cost to complete a project by job, job profitability summaries and the total unbilled hours. The fact is that these reports can be easily customized to suit the needs of your construction business.
Better Electronic Invoicing
Contractors often utilize progress billing to manage their cash flow for up and coming projects. While QuickBooks is useful for progress billing, QuickBooks Enterprise is even more suited for contractors. The software allows clients to pay using state-of-the-art electronic invoicing. Using the system will allow you to email the invoices directly using a payment link. Once the payment has been made, it will be invoiced accordingly. If you want to further optimize the software, you can utilize electronic invoice templates that are unique to certain clients. As such, your accounting team will no longer have to be concerned about recording payments to the invoices. Furthermore, if your clients do not pay on time, you can choose to set automatic reminders to help you better collect money.
No More Negative Inventory
If you are a contractor, chances are that you would have dealt with negative inventory before. This is when your accounting team finds that there are less than zero inventory items that are currently in stock. This always is a waste of time because a lot of energy has to be put into finding out where the error is. QuickBooks Enterprise is great for contractors because it prevents negative inventory from happening. All you have to do is check the ‘warn if not enough inventory to sell’ box and click on ‘don’t allow negative qualities’.
Change Orders
Change orders can be a good or bad thing for people in the construction industry. It can serve as a means for your company to earn more money on the project because there is usually more work included. If the contractor does something for the customer before they had even suggested a change order, it can ruin potential long-term relationships and lose you a lot of money as well. QuickBooks Enterprise helps to optimize the process of creating change orders and all you need is to edit the initial estimate and save the changes. You should then click on the change order window which will allow you to do so just by clicking on the button.
