Friday, April 29, 2011

Trying to find the right formula

I work for a small company that has run on the current antiquated accounting system for years.  The number of copies of "invoices" that has to be made before the material ships out the door is overwhelming and distressing for the trees. 

I was told as I was being hired 19 months ago, that the company was implementing a new system that a former employee created in Access.  My boss was very excited.  Personally I feel this all this former employee did was create a convoluted system in the hopes of always having a job versus for the betterment of the company.  Only half of us are on this new system because it has been apparent from the start that it doesn’t work. 

I give my boss a lot of credit.  After spending a lot of money for the system created in Access he has spent more money and purchased Quick Books Premier for Manufacturing.  We all have the software installed but it will be a few weeks before we are up and running.  The work at the top is well worth the future benefits in my opinion.

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In the meantime I have become friendly with Excel and have created all sorts of reports to help me in my job.  Job costing, Works In Progress, Projections, etc etc.  The one spreadsheet that I have reworked over and over again is the Project in Process.  I want to be this spreadsheet to tell me how much the contract base and any change orders totals; what has been invoiced to date and what my costs are.  Part of me thinks that every piece of material being sold with the project should be listed on this form with a cost and assigned sell, but in my business that would make for a very long spreadsheet.  So I am looking for help/suggestions on how to achieve this please.

Also if anyone is currently working with Quick Books Premier for Manufacturing and has tips please comment below.  Thanks!

2 comments:

  1. Ginny, I run QB Premier Contractor. It has been a known quantity that not everything works with QB. I actually job cost by transferring to Excel and using my own formulas...I'm guessing you may need to do the same with yours. Don't get me wrong, I think QB is well worth the money and can do amazing things over the wicked expensive other accounting softwares that I just don't think will be worth that kind of money for a niche business like ours.

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  2. Amy - That was our thought too with the more expensive industry software. I didn't know I will be able to export QB info to Excel. That will help a lot. Thanks so much!

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