 QuickBooks Online 2024, estimate form, get ready and some coffee because we're diving into it with Intuit's QuickBooks Online. Here we are online in our browser searching for QuickBooks Online Test Drive looking for the result that has Intuit.com and the URL selecting the United States version of the software and verifying that we're not a robot. Let's open up our major financial statement reports like we do every time. Reports on the left hand side, we're in our favorites, right clicking on the balance sheet to open link in new tab, we're going to right click on the profit and loss to open the link in a new tab as well. Let's look at those links up top, looking at the middle tab, closing the hamburger. First a word from our sponsor, actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers, they don't want to be seen with us, but that's okay whatever because our merchandise is better than their stupid stuff anyways. 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Here's our balance sheet tab and to the right close in the hamburger there's our profit and loss going back to the first tab. This is the setup process we do every time data input on the first tab looking at the results of that data input on the financial statements in the tabs to the right. We'll hit the drop down here we've been looking at the customer cycle remembering the customer cycle will differ depending on how complex our industry is the easiest one being like gig work or something where we wait till something clears the bank using bank feeds to record the income possibly with a deposit form. If we are working at a cash register still a cash based system but then we would want to record the sales as they happen typically with a sales receipt form then record the deposit and then match that deposit with the bank feeds or bank reconciliation to what happens on the bank side. And if we're in a cruel system we typically have an invoice and then receive the payment and then we make the deposit and match the deposit to the bank feeds or with the bank reconciliation. This time we want to take a look at the estimate form. Now the estimate form is unusual in that it's a form that doesn't actually record a transaction to the financial statements it's an internal document similar to what we saw with the purchase order on the vendors side of things. Still an important form for our bookkeeping process but not one that's going to be contributing to the creation of the financial statements. Let's first look at a flow chart to get an idea of how it will work how it will fit in this is a desktop flow chart but we're just looking at the flow of the forms which is in essence the same for any kind of accounting system. So we have our flow on the customer cycle revenue cycle or sales cycle whatever you want to call it in the full service accounting system we're usually going to be invoicing the client increasing the accounts receivable other side then going to revenue and then receiving the payment and then making the deposit. You can see that the estimate is something that could happen before we create the invoice so you might be first doing an estimate and then creating the invoice. Usually when we think of an estimate form we usually think about it like a job cost type of system where you might be in a construction company or something like that where you actually like bid for a job or make an estimate for the job if you're making something that will be unique each job being unique different from every other job then you might try to create the estimate to build how much it might cost and see if that will be approved by the person that you're working with the customer and if it is then move it over and create the invoice possibly creating it from directly the estimate that would be the general process but you can also use estimate forms anytime that a customer might be asking how much something might cost because if they're buying multiple things for example then instead of creating an invoice or a sales receipt to see how much something might cost you might pull out the good old estimate form and it's looks like an invoice in essence but it's not going to actually record anything and you might use it in that fashion as well so given that let's go on over and open one up we're going to hit the plus button and we'll go down to the estimate form let's imagine once again that customer number one look it looks like an invoice basically right so customer number one we're going to say customer one again tab and okay save it now the estimate is another form that will typically be emailing oftentimes one in which the external user will be viewing it so you might want to customize your estimate form to put your logo on it and that kind of stuff as well as opposed to some other forms where we often simply use them for internal reporting purposes primarily we have this pending tab down here so notice the estimate general process for the estimate would be it's pending it's been accepted or it's been rejected right so we could say it's pending meaning we sent it out possibly but we haven't heard back from them to see if they're going to go through with it or not if they say yay i'm going through with it then we can move it to accept it if they say nay they don't want to do it then we can reject it and then it might be simply closed uh meaning we've uh closed the uh estimate so we'll see those where those groupings will be formatting where's that you might ask then what's the purpose of having these different fields if it's not impacting the financial statements where does that come into play it'll happen within the customer center so we'll see that shortly so i'm going to close that out and then uh the estimate date let's make it on oh one oh one two four and expiration date we could add one if we so choose let's make it on the 30th and tags and then we've got the things that we're going to be adding now i'm going to use the the the items that have already been set up this time because what we're looking at here is a company file that has a job cost kind of system so let's say they they we need a pump for whatever job that they're making an actual job can be quite complex for like a construction job right so we might have a pump we might have the rock fountains that we have to add and we want like two of those and then we might have like they we need lighting in the thing that we're making here so we'll say like five lightings and let's say that we'll have to add a cost for them they're like five dollars and then we're going to say that we add the rocks the services gardening we'll put in there uh that we're going to be putting in place two of two gardenings for a hundred dollars or something so you can see the point being that the estimate could actually be quite long if you're in a construction type of job and you're trying to use the estimate form to get an idea of what the end product will be which is an art in and of itself right because you're you're trying to see how much something will ultimately cost before you before you engage in the ways you might do that i won't get into this in detail because it's a special area in and of itself but you might set up all your items for the cost of the items right and then you might also set up another item to mark up whatever your your uh profit will be that would be a very like a transparent way to see the estimate you could say hey look this is how much these items cost me and i'm marking it up and i'll show the markup here so that you can see how much i'm charging above and beyond what i expect the cost could be or you might set up each of your items here at a cost that includes your markup for example this is how much i'm charging you know including the markup but the estimate isn't going to be possibly perfect in terms of what the actual cost could be because you because a large job will have over and under estimates that you'll have to basically deal with so then the question will be once you do the job are you going to just build them based on the estimate that you gave them no matter if it goes over or under budget or are you going to use that estimate and adjust it to what actually happened over time when the actual job processes you also have issues with longer jobs with job cost system with revenue recognition issues because if the job is going to be expanding over a long period of time uh then the question is should i be recognizing revenue as i'm completing the job even before it's complete because normally what happens is we don't recognize revenue until we do what we're supposed to do give the inventory or provide the service that's when we recognize revenue but if i'm doing a construction job that takes a year or more then the question comes up well should i be recording some revenue as i go on like a percentage of completion basis so we might there's topics those are topics in and of themselves i won't go into them in a lot of detail uh here but i just want to kind of point out that at this time so let's say normally we would send well let's see what we can do here we can cancel it we can clear it we can print or preview it let's go ahead and do that let's preview the form this is what it would look like if we're going to email it out in pdf format closing that out then we can make it reoccurring if it's a reoccurring transaction we can customize it so that we can make our own style for the estimate because it is an external form we can copy it delete it or audit history notice that this form might be one that we copy possibly if we have complex estimates and we want to have a similar job that we're going to do and it's a really long estimate we might copy over one estimate and then make variations for it for a different job for example we could save it we can save and send which is typically what we would do if we're going to email it to somebody we can save a new or save and close in our case we're going to save and close it so then nothing's been recorded to the financial statements up top we're going to track this instead internally on the sales tab uh the customer center in essence we could look at it at the all sales which has all the transactions in it and we can look for the estimate transaction I think they have a a short do they have a actually it's within here so let's go in here and look at the estimates and so there is our estimate right here that we put in play if I hit the drop down make uh we can mark it as accepted we can view edit we can duplicate we can share estimate link print update status uh and delete the status being that it is pending at this point in time which we can think of as we sent it out but they haven't responded to it uh as of yet we can also go to the estimates tab here which is probably more likely where you're going to go if you're going to just review all the estimates that are outstanding once again you have your estimate here you could sort by estimate you could sort by date you've got your filter options up here looking at all estimates pending declined uh accepted closed if I look at the pending estimates there's our pending estimate right there if I go to my customer I can see it within the customers as well I have this little shortcut over here for the filter tab and that'll give me just a customer with that estimate within it if I go into that customer there is uh our estimate for that customer all right so then we could change the status of it from pending let's do that over here on the estimates tab and then if I if I hit the drop down one way you can do it is we can go to the status down here update status and then you've got our status option so it's going from pending if they accepted it so they're going to get back to us they accepted it we go great they've accepted it and then we can have by and then uh the date I'm just going to keep it as accepted here now it's dropped out of our pending filter and it's now in the accepted filter so now it's in uh the accepted and then after it's been accepted we could change the status again changing the status this way you could also change the status by going into the actual form editing the form and you have your status dropped down here and the next thing would be that it would be generally closed once you finished the job enough in essence then it would be closed and that's when you would generally make the invoice possibly if you're not on a percentage of completion you might make the invoice at the end so then it would be closed if I go back into my status it's been converted to uh closed now now if they didn't accept the project then of course if they come back and say we reject it then we're going to say rejected and that's fine we might have a lot that are rejected because we might do a lot of estimates and you know some happen and some don't we're not going to delete the estimate but we don't want the estimate to be hanging around there so that it could be pulled in to create an invoice so we can say that we that we uh we declined it and so now it's under declined so it's no longer it's already it's still there so if they come back and have a question about it we can see it but we're not going to basically use it to create an invoice with it if I go into my customer status and I look at the customer information you could see it's clearly xed out here as not something that we're following through on within that particular client instead of it just kind of hanging around there and I was thinking should we be making an invoice basically from it let's go back to the estimates again and let's change it back before we do however note that all the other ones here say that they have been converted that means that we created an invoice from the estimate which we have not yet done with this one so let's go back here I'm going to go back to the edit tab and I'm going to bring it back and say it is in the accepted status so we're going to imagine that it has been accepted save and close and then I'm going to change my filter up top to look at the accepted one there it is and now you can see here I have the button to say convert to an invoice so this will create an invoice from the estimate or I can select the drop down or I'm sorry edit it and in the invoice that is now in accepted status I have the create invoice button up top or copy to a purchase order so if we need to if we if we for example are selling something like inventory and we are saying what the inventory is and then we have to turn around and purchase it from a vendor that's why you might copy it to a purchase order in our case we're going to create a invoice from it so I'm going to create an invoice from it now it's building the invoice and looks exactly like the estimate but now it has an invoice you can see it's linked to the estimate and once again this is an external document so you we would want possibly to customize the form to make it look proper for external purposes for a client to take a look at and then if we had any changes to it we could still make the changes possibly here as the invoice has been created from the estimate so what's the invoice going to do now obviously it's going to record now like any other invoice increasing the accounts receivable 88580 it's going to be then increasing the sales by the 835 the difference of the sales tax go into sales tax payable cost of goods sold going up which is an expense type of account and then we know that the inventory is going down by the amount items that are given by these items that have been set up here which we can't see on the actual invoice let's save it and close it and now you can see here that the that the estimate is now been moved automatically now right to the closed status because we've converted it to an invoice