 QuickBooks Online 2023. Jobs, sub-customers and projects. Get ready to start moving on up with QuickBooks Online 2023. Here we are in our Get Great Guitars practice fire. We started up in a prior presentation using the 30-day free trial. We also have opened the free QuickBooks Online sample company. If you want these two things open at the same time, we suggest using the incognito window or another browser. You can open incognito window if using Google Chrome by selecting the three dots in the browser incognito window. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. And then searching in the search engine for QuickBooks online test drive. We're going to be using the sample company to compare and contrast the accounting view the view Get Great Guitars is in and the business view the view the sample company is in. If you would like to toggle back and forth between the two views you can go to the cog up top and switch the view down below. Duplicate in a couple tabs to put reports in like we do every time. Right click in the tab up top to duplicate it. Right click in the tab again to duplicate again back to the tab to the middle reports on the left hand side open it up one of our favorites that's going to be the balance sheet report by the way if you're in the business view the reports are located in the business overview and then the reports on the left hand side we're then going to tab to the right and open up the reports again and this time the profit loss the P and the L close up the hamburger scroll up and change that range from 010123 tab 123123 tab run it to refresh it into the middle tab now closing up the boogie and those ranges those are a change in we're going to go from 010123 tab 123123 tab run it to refresh it that's the setup process we do every time. We're now going to be talking about the concept of jobs sub customers and projects. Now these are usually concepts that are industry specific meaning some industries might have types of projects or jobs that are extended in nature and they want to be applying both income and expenses and tracking them on a product or job by job type of basis so this could be a job cost system often construction companies have this kind of system where they have longer projects that are going to take some time to complete also note that if you have extended time frames of projects that you're trying to complete there could be distortions to when you should be recognizing the revenue for example if I go to the float chart here normally we recognize revenue when the job is done on the revenue recognition principle of an accrual principle when we've given the inventory or when we have done the work that's usually when we invoice and create sales receipts but if you have a job that's going to take a long period of time then the question is well should I be recognizing revenue on some basis throughout that time frame as we do the work and that's where you get like percentage of completion concepts and completed contract kind of concepts now those are going to be industry specific so note that if you're a book keeper these are areas that you might want to specialize in because there's going to be less competition because less people know that specialized area but also you want to be careful if you're not specializing in those areas on what kind of clients you're picking up as you're as you're picking up clients to do work if you're a bookkeeper and we have a whole another course on like a job cost system so we're just going to kind of touch on it and the overview course here since this is we can have a whole course of course on a job cost system and we might have to update that one because they have been making changes to this concept of the projects here so we'll just give an overview of of the concepts here so notice that if I go into the sales items we've got our customers so our customers are here and if I was in the business view by the way the customers are located in the get paid and paid area and then on the customer view so oftentimes if we're going to have a job that we want to track I'll just give you the quick history on this from the software perspective in the old software or in the software that's still relevant but it was the software before in use before QuickBooks online the desktop version they would have the jobs now note that you might have a different in terminal terminology again between how you might use a job in a job cost system from a textbook scenario to how you might more specifically use the concept of job or sub-customer or project when you move into the QuickBooks system from a textbook standpoint our general ideas that we want to be tracking the job by job basis for longer or extended jobs now from a practical basis within QuickBooks there's a couple ways that you could do that in the in the old it used to be that we have just the the jobs that called that they were called which QuickBooks online now calls sub-customers that allow us to track a particular project as a sub to a to a customer so we can track that individual job that's kind of related to a customer now they also QuickBooks desktop and online have added other tools such as class tracking which can actually break out income statements based on and so you could use like a class tracking method in a similar kind of thing to to break out in essence jobs so you can kind of add a class which would be your jobs that that might not be the most common way to break it out but notice class tracking is another way that you can kind of break out your income statement so so we've got to think what tool are you're going to be using and then when we get to the online version they also added tags which has a similar method of being able to break out break out items like on the income statement which isn't isn't normally what you would do with the job cost system and then the online version decided to change the name of a job which on the desktop version to sub-customers so now we can set up a sub-customer so if you were to convert a job cost system where you used jobs on the desktop system to the online version the jobs that you had hopefully would convert over into customers and then the new thing that happened so jobs from the old version and sub-customers are like the same thing the new thing now which is I believe only on the online version and not on the desktop version is this concept of the projects and the projects have some more functionality with it than possibly the sub-customer or jobs so they do a similar thing because they're going to allow us to track items by job from a job cost system or by project whatever you want to call it from a textbook kind of terminology but now they're using like a different tool to do it it's in a whole different section than your customer section up here now projects is the new and improved kind of thing here and I think it's only available like if you have the lower versions of the software you might not have access to it you have to have like pro or above I believe to have projects so if you're below that and you don't want to pay more then you might be able to do the same you might have to use then the sub-customers which you can typically use and then if you're using the projects then then the question is well if I have access to the projects and access to the sub-contractors aren't the sub-contractors functionality redundant meaning why you know how can you use them both at this point in time and one way that you can kind of use them both is you could have like like a sub like a a customer and then a sub-customer which might be breaking out another sub-category such as like a location and then which within the location for this particular custom customer you might then apply your projects to them so you've got to be kind of a little bit careful on that also just note that as you pull in your information if you started from the desktop version and you're converting to online then I don't believe you can just convert your jobs automatically over to projects directly I think you're going to have to convert them they'll convert over to sub-customers and then you might be able to go from the sub-customers to convert them to projects if that's the end goal so it might be a little bit more burdensome than you first think but you know you may be able to do that but you want to kind of research that process and how exactly you're going to make the conversion if you're going from another software such as the desktop version to the online version and you're using jobs there and you want and you want to use the projects functionality in online okay that said let's first let's do some comparisons between these two things so let's let's look at our customers section I want to see all my customers and I'm going to make a sub-customer for Jones guitars so here's Jones guitars I'm going to make a sub-customer which will be kind of tied to Jones guitars here and so the way I'm going to do it is I'm going to say I can hit the new button up top and in the new item I'm just going to put it the name as the number 3005 we might have more detail it might be a sub-job for you know a project we're going to build a guitar for them or something you know whatever the project's going to be but I'm just going to give it a number for now so we give it the number and then down here this is where we have is it a sub-customer which is similar to a job basically the same thing as a job on the desktop version I'm going to say sub-customer for Jones guitars boom and then it says bill parent customer so if you look at the little questionnaire it'll it'll give you an item but in essence that means it's going to be billed you know through the parent and so you might have this is this is one of those areas where you might use the sub-customer in alignment with the projects because you might have the parent being Jones guitars and then you might have a sub-customer that has a different billing than billing you know Jones guitars and that could be your sub-category and then possibly have the projects tied to the sub-category that's one way that you could you might you could see out both of these things might be tied in even though you might be using projects instead of jobs or sub-customers as we go here all right so there's that so then I'm gonna so if I save that I'm gonna say save that and then if I scroll down or now I'm going it's going into the to the job so I'm gonna say let's go back to just the sales and the customers and then I scroll down so there is our sub-customer now if I was to make an invoice I won't actually record it I can say the invoice is going to go to that sub-customer right so I can say plus button invoice I'm not going to actually record anything but if I just say 3005 then it'll it'll apply it to Jones guitars colon the sub-customer so the invoice will be going to the sub-customer which will ultimately be billed to Jones guitars so I can track it within the sub-customer and so I'm going to say do you want to leave without saving I'm going to say yes and then I created another one here so you can do that by going back up and saying new customer again and within new customer I'm just going to say it's going to be 4002 for the name and then this one I'm going to say is a sub-customer for same the guitar man and then we're going to say it's going to be billing the parent as well so pretty easy to set those two up I'm going to say save it and then if I go back to my my customers now I've got these two sub-customers for Jones guitars and Sam the guitar man and I can apply items to them directly now as we do so you could say okay then I can have reports if I go to the reports over here and look at my my reports there's a profit and loss by customer for example that can break out that'll break out the activity up top as we put the information on a customer by customer kind of basis and that's one way that we can track this information we don't have anything into those sub-customers yet so we don't have anything in there at this point in time so now let's consider the project so if you go into the projects this is obviously one of the newer kind of features which is a kind of neat new feature but again there's a lot of overlap with some of the other tools that are there so you really want to think through what's the best tool for the thing that I am doing you want to do some research on it because it can be tedious to try to use one tool and then and then switch to another tool so when you're thinking about the income statement if you're trying to break out the income statement by by location or something or by department should I use the locations or should I use class tracking should I use tags should I use and now you've got your your projects and jobs if you have a job cost system and so on so there's special there's pros and cons to each of these things that you they most of them have their specialized usage but you want to make sure that you're picking the one that's best for you so okay so run your projects with confidence so make better decisions by knowing how your your jobs are doing so you can see how it works here profitability in one place organize your project finances with a clear view of profits keep track of your labor costs quick books helps you connect the dots between your payroll and projects that's one of the great new things here if you're running payroll within quick books you can use that in integration with the projects a little bit better I believe than the jobs or the sub-customers eliminate the guesswork understand which projects makes money and where you should focus your time okay so you'd have to start the projects to turn it on or to add the project and then we have the project name up top I'm just going to call it project one project project one and obviously a very generic name and then I can select the customer I'm going to once again choose uh Jones guitars now note that I could choose the sub the sub-customer here if I if I had Jones guitars I was like the parent and then these as a different location and then you apply the projects possibly uh to the different locations but I'm just going to show the example of the customers the sub-customer versus the project by signing this to Jones guitars now you have to be careful because you don't want to assign a project that has the same name as a sub-customer because that'll be confusing right you want you want to use know which one you're going to be using and then I'm going to say this happens that let's say at the beginning of the year end date not yet because it's in progress so the standard terminology with these projects is either it's not started so maybe you made an estimate or something on it but it hasn't been started in progress means you're working on the project generally completed means it's done and possibly it's closed so you had a project that's you're no longer actively working on and canceled and has been canceled so you can have your notes on the project on down below and so I'm going to save that and so now it sets up our project your project at a glance see project information uh end to end tracked income and all your costs so here's your transactions see all your project organized by income and costs and then this section time activity you can add your your team's time and know what they worked on and how it affects your project that's the one of the cool features that projects has that again I don't think they have as easily with just the sub customers multiple views of your project drill into the details manage and report on what has been spent how much has been invoiced and identify your next steps so then we have the attachments all your files in one place attach documents images spreadsheets and so on here and so up top keep organized see all the pieces of your project in one place and then add an estimate and invoice and so on done so basically you've got your if I go back up top here's all my projects that would be listed out we only have one of course at this point in time you can see how it works you've got your these are the items that are sorted by in progress that's the default or I can sort by completed or canceled or see all statutes and I have all customers or Jones here that's the only one I have in my projects and then we could set up our our cost rates here we've got the the search engine so you could search if you had a whole bunch of projects new project or convert from sub customer now this is that nice tool now that if you were using sub customers before possibly before they had projects to the your satisfaction in online or possibly because you're converting from another software like quickbooks desktop you might be able to get them into the sub customer and then possibly convert them from the sub customer into the project so you can use some of the functionality such as possibly the payroll tracking and whatnot and then down below you've got your projects and so if I go into a particular project then you have the information for it so we've got up top a not started completed canceled we've got and your status is in progress we've got the income versus the costs give you a nice quick look here the profit margin the difference between the income and loss or expenses open invoices here overdue invoices shown if you need to edit it you've got your editing up top and then you've got your tabs down below with the overview income minus the costs that's your profit your invoices your expenses your bills your payroll information there's your transactions so see where you're making money and so on time activity project reports so the reports for a particular project and the attachments that you can add so everything's a nice one little spot here and if you wanted to add an invoice you could do an invoice up here but now you can go into the project and if you invoice for a particular project it will populate the customer jones guitars project one notice it's still under the sub looks like a sub customer but it's not a sub customer it's a project the other thing that's a little bit different about it is you might think if it's a project is like a sub customer if i went into the sales area and i went into my customers you would think it might show up here under the sub customer but it doesn't it's not in your customer area the projects although are kind of set up as a subordinate to a customer they're going to be housed only in the projects area so so also you have your reports from the projects area on a project by project basis but you might want to report for like all the projects and i think they have if i type in project project profit profitability summary they have this report here under the reports so you could you could dive into that to try to get a summary report on it as well and let's just do one more to complete our example if i go back into the projects on the left and i'm going to go i'm going to go back to the projects and then close the hand boogie i'm going to say new project and this one i'm just going to call generically project two project two customer this time again i'm just going to compare it to the other one sam the guitar man and then i'll say it started on january and i'm going to say it's in progress as well and so now we could just so just so we could see two projects save it so now we've got our other project our recap information in here nothing's in it thus far obviously i can go back to my project window all projects up top and now we've got our two projects that are in place here now in future presentations we won't dive too much into the projects but we'll talk a little bit on how you might use like a job cost system and note that even like a bookkeeping firm might use like a job cost system or a law firm for example so even like service companies can use a job cost system although it's usually a little bit more simple to do than a company that deals with like raw materials and whatnot that they're going to be putting together like a construction company because then you've got that added issue with the with the with the materials now if you're in the business view by the way you should still have your projects over here so i'm going to go back to the home page and we have they're going to be under the business overview and then you've got your projects on down below if you have the project's capacity to be utilizing the projects in the business view