setting up invoice programs

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troberts2007

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Trussville AL
I am about to change my invoicing program. im still a relative small company. the one I originally started with ,i just made up item numbers at random and wrote my descriptions. i wound up with several duplicates that i can never remember when I need them and wast time searching or guesing. my question is how do y'all handle that . do you create your own item numbers and description or do you use/copy the supply house number to make it easier to generate purchase orders/quotes for material. do you have a set method for creating them.
 
Copying supply house numbers work but you will find for the most common items it may be easier to use your own. EMT050..EMT300. What drives my office help nuts is when our vendors decide to change product lines and we start with new numbers again. I never got around to doing it, but you may want to investigate the software that has item and price lists included.
 
IMHO, invest in Quick Books Pro. It's an excellent program and will do just about anything you want.
 
I'm switching to quickbooks self employeed. Any thoughts on it. Would I be better off buying quickbooks pro /contractor pack. Cloud based seemed like it might be better for immediate billing since I do a lot of service work.

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troberts2007 said:
I'm switching to quickbooks self employeed. Any thoughts on it. Would I be better off buying quickbooks pro /contractor pack. Cloud based seemed like it might be better for immediate billing since I do a lot of service work.

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I don't know how well the Cloud performs.

Our internet connections are questionable throughout our area and with the Yahoo debacle I'm tempted, in the back of my mind, to go back to snail mail and a standalone with no internet access. :eek:hmy:
 
troberts2007 said:
I'm switching to quickbooks self employeed. Any thoughts on it. Would I be better off buying quickbooks pro /contractor pack. Cloud based seemed like it might be better for immediate billing since I do a lot of service work.

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It sounds like a great idea but I can't give you any feedback on the cloud service. I'm still running a 1994 version of Quickbooks and it does exactly what I want it to. I still hard copy my invoices. And no, I don't send smoke signals to communicate with my customers.:huh:
 
Pro vs. Online

Pro vs. Online

I used QB Pro for years and switched to QB Online this year. Pros: It's portable. I run it on my iPad in the field. Estimates and invoices while I'm on the service call. The customer can pay by credit card from the emailed invoice. Pretty slick! Cons: It's decades behind QB Pro in function and usability. No job profitability breakdown, fewer reports. Quirky data input. However, lack of cell service has not been a problem and I'm in a pretty rural area. All in all, I'm glad I switched.
 
I did a lot of work with database systems over the years. The things I learned are you never know, you just might run out of space to keep going so here is a trick.

00000001, 00000002, 00000003, 000000004, and on....... You have much more room for individual records like this before you end up outgrowing your system. Mostly this counts more for primary key numbers, not invoice numbers because you are not likely to need millions of numbers for invoices, but hey,,,,, you never know now do you?
 
I've found an excellent program "HouseCall" I've started using recently and plan to stay with until this one does not have the capability that I need, although I might use it indefinitely for small to medium size Jobs, service work indefinitely but it does everything. For material lists either fill it out manually or in my instance I've found a supply house that provided me with a CSV spreadsheet which it will upload and sync into the program or if you've used QuickBooks previously you could use that also. I guess it would depend on what you use and what's easiest just make sure it's updated.
 
We use QB Enterprise. Be prepared to pay for yearly support to get the 'free' help when needed the first few years. Payroll support is about $600 to get automatic updates and we do payroll in house.

Find an accountant that works with QB and use her/him when setting it up.
 
Another vote for QB Pro here. My sister is a CPA, and she refuses to let me go with the online version. Says there is so much lacking in it. I didn't bother asking for any details.
 
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