JOB COSTING Q&A
|
|
|
GUARANTEED
GREAT IDEAS!
Job
Costing Tips from Real Clients & Profits
Users
These
Clients & Profits users share their tips on how
they manage job costing better:
Don't start work on a job without a
client-signed estimate. "We do not start any
work unless we have the estimate signed," says
Laura Noble Plaura of Muse Cordero Chen. "It's very
easy for the client to change its mind, and if you
started work before you received the written
approval you may be stuck with incurred costs, as
they were not approved."
Pinpoint exact billing amounts. "We have a
strict cut-off date for billing, but sometimes
additional costs are added before we can bill,"
says Kathy Borgione of Benghiat Advertising. "We
use the Job Cost report from Snapshots to print job
cost reports for a specific date range. We can then
bill exactly the amounts we want to and leave the
remaining costs for the next billing cycle.
Review all job cost detail quickly. "I print
the Job WIP report from a job's WIP window before I
think about closing a job," says Laney Gutstein of
The Gary Group. "It helps me determine if a cost
has gone unbilled. It even shows the AR invoice
number a cost was billed on, and whether or not the
client has paid their invoice. At our shop, we call
it our Nothing Falls Through The Cracks
report."
Always use change orders to track changes in a
job's costs. "Using change orders helps us
track changes to a job's original estimate," says
Dawn Jaworski of Gabriel Diericks Razidlo. "Change
orders show up on the Job Summary report (see pages
4-5) in their own column making them very easy to
track. We use the Job Summary report a lot when
getting ready to close a job be sure that all costs
are within estimate."
Don't forget late job costs. "As soon as a
job is complete, we close it. If any late costs
come in," says Russ Norwood of 2g Marketing, "we
are immediately notified because jobs are reopened
and get the 'reopened' status. Our late costs get
billed; not forgotten about."
|
|
|
Q. Which
costs affect the G/L? Why?
A/P invoices, job cost, checks and Employee Expense reports
all affect the General Ledger. When they are added, you'll
reference a job and task, and when they are posted the job
will get updated along with the G/L.
Q. Which costs do not affect the G/L?
Time, in-house expenses and internal charges don't affect
the G/L. They are entered into the G/L in other ways. For
example, payroll is entered through a journal entry based
upon your actual payroll checks.
Q. Why can I enter a job number on journal entries? Does
it affect the job?
This is for reference only, it does not affect the job.
Audit Trail reports can be printed for a job or sub-totaled
by job. This is useful for analysis, but it has no impact on
the job.
Q. Are POs job costs?
No, POs are not considered job costs in Clients &
Profits. They are committed costs and always appear in their
own column on reports--never with actual job costs.
Q. What is a job cost's billing status?
A job cost's billing status is a word
|
|
that
describes the current state of an individual cost in regard
to its being billed. Examples of cost status are: Unbilled,
Billed, Unbillable, or On-Hold. If an unbilled cost is
included on an A/R invoice, like a Progress / Final
billing, its cost status changes from Unbilled to Billed.
Cost statuses can also be manually edited.
Q. How and why do you write off costs?
You should write off costs once the client has been billed
as much as possible for the job (and you can't transfer
unbilled costs to another job.) This will allow you to
review them using the Write-offs report and analyze your
problem clients. Costs are written off from the job WIP
window, which lists a job's costs. Write-offs can be
automated by setting the "write-off all unbilled costs"
option in preferences. If checked, this option will
automatically change the cost status to " write-off" for any
remaining unbilled costs whenever a job is closed.
Q. Are checks that pay A/P considered job costs?
No. That's because the A/P invoices themselves were job
costs. (If they were you would be charging the job twice for
the same cost.) You can, however, write checks for job costs
(called "direct disbursements"). These checks don't pay off
a vendor invoice; instead, you can enter any number of jobs
and tasks.
Q. When is an amount on a check considered a job
cost?
When it was added as a job cost check (not a vendor,
overhead, or employee expense check). It means that the step
of adding an invoice to a job was skipped.
|
