How to use QBO Projects to track job costs

Why QuickBooks Online Projects is your construction company hero

In our last article, I talked about using Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS) for tracking your direct job/project costs. This is instead of adding every business expense, like job costs and administrative overhead costs to the expense section of the company’s P&L statement.

I also mentioned QuickBooks Online (QBO) Projects. If you are using QBO Plus or Advanced subscriptions, you have this tool available. Once you activate it, you can assign each Customer a Project and track all of these job related expenses in the Project.

Direct labor assigned to the project. Equipment, fuel, materials, and other costs to provide the finished product to the client.

Why use QBO Projects to track job costs?

Why? To see how profitable the job was. Was your Profit Margin within industry standards? Was it below? Was it in the negative region?

You can’t know how your bidding estimates are if you’re not tracking direct job costs. As COGS.

And you also track the income received per project so you get the best Profit Margin number.

Create a new Project for a client

Here is the screen to create a new project. Name your new project. Select a customer or add a new customer. Add a start and end date, if known. Add any project notes. And click save.

Then you will get to the Project screen and and can start tracking Project income and costs. You can also attach any Project related documents like copy of bills, in your cloud subscription.

QBO Projects tracking your job-by-job profitability

We reviewed why tracking your job Profit Margin is important for gaining feedback about your bidding strategy.

We see how QuickBooks Online can help you track each job’s profitability with the Projects app.

So, in closing, if you’re using QBO Plus or Advanced subscriber, you must try out projects. C & M Companies Inc C & M Bookkeeping Division can help you get this going to enhance your abilities to bid with a realistic profit margin in mind.

Call us at 775-525-6212 and get a QBO Projects profit review going for your service business.

Having trouble getting your video Google Business Profile approved?

Read this post about how to get your GBP video approved