Quick Books for Contractors

[Mule]

Any of you use Quick Books for Contractors? is it relatively easy to set up? will it figure payroll? Thanks Mule

 

[busman]

Yes. I've been using it for about a year. I don't have employees, but I'm sure it does anything related to a business. It's easy to set-up, but there is a lot of work in learning to use it. The hard work is worth the effort. I don't know how I ever lived without it.

Mark

 

[bradleyelectric]

Any of you use Quick Books for Contractors? is it relatively easy to set up? will it figure payroll? Thanks Mule

Yes we use it and no it's not easy to set up. The first version I had I used it as a checkbook register. You need to make sure you set up the chart of accounts correctly. It is a very big and powerful program that has an awful lot of bells and whistles and sometimes is a lot more complicated than it needs to be. It will do the payroll for a yearly subscription of I think it is $250/ yr. We used to subscribe but now use http://www.medlin.com/ for payroll and back the info into quickbooks for accounting.

That's what the bookkeeper wants to do and I tell everyone she's the boss. Note when we stopped the payroll subscription it no longer will give us payroll information for the time we did subscribe ie prior years tax form information. We subscribed last to it 2006.

 

[CopperTone]

best thing i ever bought. I paided the lady that does my payroll to come over and give me lessons on it. It took about 6 - 1hr lessons to to set up and learn to use properly. It saves so much time than the previous manual way I used to do paperwork and referring back is so much easier too. Tracks who still owes money, how long, custom templates, partial invoices, all kinds of things.
I don't use the payroll service but the lady that does my payroll for me says that when I have 4 or 5 guys on payroll or more, I will have to use it - it will be much easier for her.

 

[Fulthrotl]

Any of you use Quick Books for Contractors? is it relatively easy to set up? will it figure payroll? Thanks Mule

quickbooks premier. $350.00 at frys electronics.

my sister in law, who's a cpa, nodded her head when i said that was
what i was setting up to run.

as was posted, you need your schedule of accounts set up correctly,
or you won't know if you are afoot or horseback. if you are a sparky,
instead of an accountant, you will want an accountant to set it up.
it has payroll modules, invoicing modules, nickal and dime you to death
with subscription features modules......

it'll pull your data directly from your bank, or cc company, and you can
kerplunk it directly into job or general costs in your schedule of accounts.

works well, once it's set up.

truth be told, as i don't run payroll with deductions, just 1099 stuff,
i use a spreadsheet i built that tells me exactly where i am at, as far
as daily expenses, job expenses, net taxable income to date for quarterlies,
the whole poopy.

i do 100% tracking of all money that goes thru my hands. no illusions, and
i know exactly where i stand at the end of the day. if i don't do that, i can
have $10,000 disappear in a month, with no idea about where it went, other
than a vague ummmm... hmmmm.... uh....

if you want a blank copy of the excel sheet i use, so you can see how
mine works, and tailor it to your needs, pm me with a email address.
best of all, it's free......


randy

 

[Ed Carr]

Mule, As others have said it's a little hard to setup.
Also every thing you really need costs extra.
I renamed it Quick Bucks.

Ed

 

[JohnE]

We/ve used QB pro for almost 10 years. I think it's great. I suscribe to the plan that does payroll, W2's, and some other stuff. That plan also allows me to accept cc's. (I think it's all the same subscription)

I can't imagine the contractor version is much different.

 

[JohnE]

Mule, As others have said it's a little hard to setup.
Also every thing you really need costs extra.
I renamed it Quick Bucks.

Ed

But is typically better and cheaper than getting that elsewhere. My accountant used to do some of the services I now get from QB.

Payroll is a huge service. We used to do it ourselves. One payment misapplied by our accountant cost us hours to straighten out.

 

[RHJohnson]

I gave up on QB. It was much more involved than I needed or wanted. Much of what it did I did not need. I also found out I didn't need someone else to do the payroll.
I found out long ago that those accountants when doing your taxes or payroll can only do it if you give them all the information. And you better check their work! I found their mistakes, so I decided I didn't need someone doing my taxes either.
It's really easy to set it up in your computer. Set up files to record anything you wish kept in it's own file. Do it however you want. Get Turbo Tax to do your taxes at the end of the year, it walks you right through everything, step by step.
It does take some of your time, and you need the right attitude to be able to deal with it. But none of it, payroll or taxes, is difficult. I accept cc also, and it doesn't cost me anything except the cc discount - the money goes right into my business bank account each day, and the credit card processor gets paid once each month. Shop around for the low cost processor - and you can keep your own business bank account.

 

[electricmanscott]

I gave up on QB. It was much more involved than I needed or wanted. Much of what it did I did not need. I also found out I didn't need someone else to do the payroll.
I found out long ago that those accountants when doing your taxes or payroll can only do it if you give them all the information. .

Which is exactly why Quickbooks is so great. All the information is right there.

 

[ptonsparky]

Recently updated to 2009 Premier contractor vs because it is supposed to be better at creating reports or doing certain tasks while in multiple user mode. Haven't seen a lot of difference yet but there are some other nice extras. Sales tax reports are still painstakingly slow.

I would suggest getting someone to help you set it up now so you don't end up struggling with features that could have been more helpful. Payroll is a snap with it. They want to sell you ever thing under the sun, just pick and choose 'til you run out of money. Those popups can be turned off.