WSW - Podcast Job Costing Series Part 2: Clean Setup That Scales
===
[00:00:00]
Introduction and Welcome
---
Dan DeLong: Welcome everybody to another workshop Wednesday. Casual Conversations for Serious Workflows brought to you by school bookkeeping.com where it's all about learning QuickBooks your way. However you want to learn QuickBooks, we got away for that self-paced [00:01:00] guided.
Private tutoring. We got all those options. And we are joined again by our job costing Ninja Shana Quinn. How are you, Shauna?
Shanna Quinn: I am doing well, Dan. How are you?
Dan DeLong: Very good, thank you.
Job Costing Fundamentals Recap
---
Dan DeLong: This is the second of our series if you're not tired of job costing discussions, we will know not that. We will have more.
So last week we talked about like the job costing fundamentals and some to find some glossary terms and those types of things.
Setting Up Job Costing in QuickBooks
---
Dan DeLong: So now we're gonna get into the setup and setting up inside of QuickBooks to. Get the most out of, job costing. So that's our question of the day, right?
What's the key setup step to use job costing in QBO? [00:02:00] So let's start with our, discussion here and I gotta scroll up here.
Standardizing Practices Across Clients
---
Dan DeLong: So the, main thing is, standardizing practices ac across the board. Now, Shauna, do you find that you know all of your clients. Subscribe to the same best practices, or is it depending on their kind of trade that they do?
A home builder might have one preference over an interior design or something like that. What what have you found in your experie?
Shanna Quinn: I have a mix of clients. We do, there's home builders custom home builder, remodeler interior designer, and then obviously subcontractor. But of the same trait types.
No, they do things very differently for [00:03:00] for the most part our Costcos are about the same. And that part of it is, a very familiar and similar type setup. But everything else about how they estimate and, how they're invoicing, the timing of it, that is done differently.
Dan DeLong: Got it.
Naming and Organizing Projects
---
Dan DeLong: So how do you find that you name and organize these, the projects themselves? So that they're, so that just everybody's on the, same page, whether it's your client or, people on your team.
Shanna Quinn: For the most part, individually the clients are doing the same thing within each of their projects, but it is across the board with our clients that are not doing things similar.
So the naming really is. Based off of what makes it easier for them and [00:04:00] for their, their, employees, their carpenters in the field. The majority of the structure is typically client's last name and then slash address. So the client is there's the project client level and then the project level.
And then the project is reiterated last name, address to make that easier identification of what job you're at. Other clients that we have that do custom home builds or large custom builds are, a lot of them actually use job numbers. So it's based off of the year, the first two digits typically of when that contract was signed.
And then just in numerical order of which the contract was signed and jobs were getting started and then job numbers were being assigned.
Dan DeLong: Got it.
Understanding Change Orders
---
Dan DeLong: And, I don't think we had talked about this in any of the, prior, prior workshops that we had done, but [00:05:00] there's this special transaction type or circumstance I guess that we want to chat about first.
Is, and it's called a change order. Can you define what, is a change order and how and why? It plays a role in, the special trades.
Shanna Quinn: Change order is anything outside the original scope of that was estimated on. So even for our clients that do time and material and markup. They are still doing an estimate for that client to, 'cause they're obviously still going to their trades and saying, here's the job, here's the scope of it, what would this cost me?
So they can then pass that information along just 'cause they do t and m plus markup does not always necessarily mean that the client's just writing checks. And it's, it could be it could be a few thousand up to a hundred or maybe even a $2 [00:06:00] million job if it's a complete home build.
Even in that case, we do still track change orders to keep things a little bit more organized and be able to provide those actual versus estimate numbers back to the clients. Their
Dan DeLong: Now, is that something that is that is required for them to do or is it more of, best practices in that industry with regards to if they need to, track some kind of change order process.
Shanna Quinn: I think it's definitely should be a part of best practices if there's someone that's not doing it just for the, like I said, setting the expectations for their, your, for their clients to have an un it's on an open checkbook type of job. But also for you. Internally to be able to track that and make sure that you know that the changes and the cost assigned to those [00:07:00] changes are being coded properly.
Because if you pull an estimate versus actual report. And your estimate only remains what your original estimated numbers were, but you continue to have higher expenses because of changes, Uhhuh that have been requested. Then constantly your numbers are not gonna look good.
Dan DeLong: Looks like you underestimated which,
Shanna Quinn: yes.
Dan DeLong: Which, which is part of the process of making decisions based off of the. The stuff that you're doing in the workflows that you're doing inside of your inside of your system so that you can, ah, okay, I need to make sure that I track these change order process Yes, appropriately.
Now, as far as how that occurs.
Tracking Change Orders in QuickBooks
---
Dan DeLong: In QuickBooks Desktop, they supported, and I'm using air quotes for those of you that are listening. They they supported change orders through the estimates [00:08:00] module. When you made a change to a, prerecorded estimate what it would do is in the body of the estimate, it would put a, a.
A summary of what those changes were. So it's on the original estimate. So you send that estimate again, presumably for approval, to approve those approve those changes. But then it isolates or itemizes out what the change is. So it's essentially. An audit log of the estimate as changes are actually made.
Shanna Quinn: Which is exactly actually what the advanced level per QuickBooks does too. When you're using their estimating function, it isolates it and highlights the changes that were made in the timestamp. So that's really okay
Dan DeLong: now, going all the way over [00:09:00] QuickBooks online and into. Intuit Enterprise Suite, as we had dis discovered when we went to Intuit Connect a couple weeks ago, is that Intuit Enterprise Suite they're, trying to use contractors as that first industry type for Indu for Intuit Enterprise Suite.
And they actually have taken it a, step different in that change orders is its own specific transaction. Type in between a sales order, I'm sorry, a an estimate and an invoice. So as change orders are made, they are actually separate transaction types that individually need approval. So I guess in in your opinion, which is better, is it better to have a separate estimate transaction in this case, a change order to be approved?
Or is it. Start with one and [00:10:00] work and work only with one estimate.
Shanna Quinn: I think that from an estimating standpoint, providing that estimate to a client I think they like the overall picture personally to say, here's the updated estimate with the change orders that we've discussed, highlighted here for you.
I, find that my clients like that a little bit more. It's a little bit more organized. It's not as choppy, but also at the same time, we can also do variances on there as well. So we can say, okay 'cause, of this change order, this is now the impact that it has on the original estimate. So we're able to even go a little bit more.
Okay above and say, we're gonna take this line out. Not necessarily removing it, but noting that this is gonna change because now it's a part of a change order itself. Just as a random example, if they originally said, I would like regular this kind of flooring [00:11:00] we quoted that floor, part of the change order now could be that they say hold on, I found this much nicer.
But it's a little bit more expensive. We can create that change order, but we're able to say, okay, we're reducing this, or we're increasing the cost, however, they wanna display on the estimate, but keeping it organized for the client, their clients, to still scroll down and say, overall, here's now what I'm expected to spend.
Dan DeLong: Got it. So it as, most things in the QuickBooks ecosystem. It depends. It it boils down to the adult diaper answer of it Really just depends on what you want to get out of QuickBooks, and be able to make. Educated decisions based off of what you put in.
Shanna Quinn: And then in there's in that more advanced system in that environment, [00:12:00] there's more, options of tracking the related expenses to those where in regular QBO plus or advanced, there's no additional options to track that outside of the advance where you can create those custom fields that we talked about last week.
The adding to, instead of creating a separate really doesn't help that estimate versus actual from a higher level review standpoint. 'cause all those transactions are still gonna just fall by, cost code. Here's now the total, unless your clients also have change order related cost codes, which a lot of ours do.
Or we use the class function to assign co.
Dan DeLong: Gotcha. So that's multiple ways that you can approach it, re regard re regarding, what their personal preference is, right?
Shanna Quinn: Yes.
Estimating in QuickBooks Online vs Desktop
---
Dan DeLong: Now one thing that you know, getting in, [00:13:00] hopefully we don't get too far into the weeds here, but because we do want to have this, be the fundamentals of job costing, but, discussions that I've had with with prospective clients, just showing them QuickBooks, the, difference, one of the differences between estimations or estimates in, desktop and estimates and creating estimates in QuickBooks Online. Because it was pointed out to me when somebody is creating an estimate in QuickBooks Desktop, it shows the cost of.
The items and the cost codes that are put in there in terms, and then you're able to associate a markup with it, right on the estimate. You don't have that option in QuickBooks Online. I was just taking a look at it while you were answering the last question, but there's not a column to, [00:14:00] to show the cost.
Talk a, bit about. When they're creating estimates, which is better, right? And if they're using QuickBooks Online understanding that might not be an option or an ideal workflow in, in QuickBooks online because that cost is not there.
Shanna Quinn: So in QuickBooks Online advance where you're actually able to.
Create job specific estimates. The estimate itself does have a column and it is by cost code. And then you can either show that cost code depending on what your template format looks like. But it does have a, your cost field and then the margin field or markup field. So you are able to, but you're right that column you don't last time I looked, we don't have an option to show it or not show it.
So in the background though, when it does the estimate versus [00:15:00] actual, it is going to pull from that line item plus whatever your markup was. Alternatively, what a lot of our contractors do when they're providing the estimate anyways, is they'll make a builder fee and say, our builder fee is 20 or 22 or 23% of our hard cost as referenced below, above.
So we will. Package everything up to make it hard, cost above. And then soft costs are below soft costs. Meaning like administrative time, job site maintenance and cleanings, that kind of thing. Accounting fees, if you pass that along, your insurance fees, if that gets passed along that's not stuff that's marked up.
It's stuff that is our soft cost for our job. But everything else, your plumbing, your framing, your electrical, all that's hard costs and all of that, then you just have your percentage in the [00:16:00] quantity line. And then you have the subtotal of what your hard costs are formatted into and brought over into the your per item and enter it there.
So it, it brings it up and it shows it on there. Most contractors do. Say, Hey, here's what my cost is. You're gonna be paying me 20% or 25% for labor on markups and you're paying maybe it's 18. Some people play with your materials versus subcontractor. 'cause everybody looks at subcontractor fees being a little high.
So to put a 20% or 25% markup, they might say we're doing 20% on subs, but 25 or 28% on material so they can average out.
Dan DeLong: And is that something that they, want to show and, display that to the customer, or is that. Essentially giving the customer leverage. [00:17:00] Hey, I see what your markup is here.
Can we, I think, can we negotiate on that?
Shanna Quinn: It is an item that can be negotiated, obviously, if it's listed there. Most of my contracts contractor clients are very upfront. Those that I've worked with in the past, everyone has been upfront about it with their clients and it's written in stone in the contract.
So if you've got a client that, they've got a client, they're signing on. They're gonna review it to see what it's gonna cost 'em too. It's, I think it's more acceptable that it's put out there where before it was worked into everything.
Dan DeLong: Gotcha. I
Shanna Quinn: think there's more
Dan DeLong: The.
Yeah, imagine that in the, contract space.
Chart of Accounts Setup
---
Dan DeLong: What so the foundation of setting up a business as far as the financial picture of course is the, chart of [00:18:00] accounts. What is your approach towards creating a standardized chart of accounts? In in hopes of getting the most out of the financials, in the job costing space.
Shanna Quinn: Our cogs are really we keep them slightly limited because I can drill in by pulling a product by pulling a report, by cost code. If I see something wonky when I, when you know what your average markup is for your clients, if you pull a report a p and l, when you do a percent by income.
Listed and you're like, oh, that's interesting. I've got a way higher number in my pods than it, then it really should be based off of this fixed margin that, or markup that we use. So I think, our, basic chart of accounts is literally general liability workers' [00:19:00] comp. If we have field labor, we do put that field labor up in our cogs.
To keep that so that the your, your cogs is a true representative of what you're billing and is covered essentially by income. It's not overhead. Some CPAs don't like it, some do those that don't. We just do journal entries to reverse it for year end and, move on. We do materials and then subcontractors and 10 99 laborers.
So if they are not an actual, if they're not an actual subcontractor, it's just mis, an a person that I hired to come and lay some concrete or put some papers down and they're not actually incorporated. I know that 10 99 labor line is likely one that I don't have insurance on. So we're able to, focus on [00:20:00] that and know that I might have to pay a little extra towards their workers' comp and general liability and stuff like that to keep up with costs. But we, when we need detail, we go in through. Cost codes not through our chart of accounts.
Dan DeLong: So that's so like when you're trying to separate out your direct costs and the, indirect costs, you would do that more in a cost code on the product or service level as opposed to, in the, chart of accounts themselves, right?
Shanna Quinn: Yes. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Okay. Have you ever had trouble. With tracing costs to a specific job because of the chart of accounts set up, or is it more of you're just overdoing it because you're getting with all the different dimensions essentially that you can use of costs cost codes and classes and the projects, you'll have more than you need to get the [00:21:00] report that you're looking for out of that?
Or have you ever seen, people make too much emphasis on the, chart of account setup.
Shanna Quinn: Yes. I actually reviewed a file yesterday. Every single cost code had the same chart of accounts under cost of goods, which then why would you use both? So they had over 200, 200 accounts in their cogs.
Subaccounts. And every single, like I said, every single one of them was individually mapped to the same exact coding as a cost code. I don't see why that would be necessary because like you mentioned, all the other features we have that can help us drill in and we pull on a weekly basis, we are automatically pulling and reviewing any cogs.
A booked transaction that is not assigned to a job. [00:22:00] So if it accidentally got brought over as a cost of goods, but there's no true job related or assigned to it, we know every single Friday and we're able to go back and review those. Just like we have our ask client expense and income and COGS account.
If we know these are vendors that they're paying that we're constantly are job cost related, those are also reports that we're pulling and reviewing on a weekly basis to make sure that. Especially for our team at t and m clients, we wanna make sure that we're capture everything so we can invoice it for them and they don't miss out on that revenue.
Dan DeLong: Got it. So that kind of segues nicely into the the products and services or where that's where you would, segue or move, if you see, okay, they've got a monstrous profit of loss here. Maybe we can consolidate that and expand out on the cost code.
So [00:23:00] that's, where you're gonna, get that split, on your cost code set up.
Shanna Quinn: Yeah, absolutely. And you could be as detailed as you want. It's obviously gonna be very specific to whatever their trade is. Or even my client in the Keys has different cost codes and different markups because of his location.
He mostly works on historical homes, so he's not ordering the same stuff. Down the street from ACE Hardware or ho Home Depot or Lowe's, for the most part, he's having to do a lot of special orders or we are having to have a house relocated going down the street so that now the person coming in can build a new house.
But that's a historic property. So there's obviously different codes based off of what you're doing, but the main. The [00:24:00] main thing you always wanna keep in mind for your cost codes is you don't have to be as specific as down to okay, these are untreated pine two by fours or four by eights, right?
You can, you don't have to be that detailed, but you can if you want, and then you just point that to your material COGS account. And when you set it up properly, but you always wanna keep material and internal labor and subcontractor and 10 99 labor separate. Just in my opinion, because obviously our contractor clients are undergoing constant, audits on a some kind of, sometimes it's quarterly, sometimes it's annually. So to make that easier on the audit side keeping those items separate and coding them properly and catching to make sure you're coding those properly is a constant, [00:25:00] and a big thing just to make sure that's set up properly.
But be as detailed as you want or be as minimal as you want, but keep those separate.
Dan DeLong: It depends
Shanna Quinn: and it depends.
Dan DeLong: So you. You mentioned subcontractors in 10 90 nines, as if they're two separate things. I are they two separate things or are they, 'cause I know a lot of people will conflate the two and put
Shanna Quinn: Yes, they subcontract.
Dan DeLong: I look 90
Shanna Quinn: separate things because there is a 10 99, my subcontractors likely an LLC reporting as an S corp. Or or partnership. So 10 90 nines are required, obviously for individuals or single member LLCs, right? And then the corporations they don't require a 10 99 or the, they are, you are not required to file a 10 99 on them.
They also likely have [00:26:00] insurance if they are incorporated. Where a single member LLC may not be again, going back to the auditing and stuff, I keep 'em separate for that purpose. And also for easy insurance certificate and stuff, tracking.
Dan DeLong: Got it. Got it.
Tracking Time and Labor Costs
---
Dan DeLong: Speaking of subcontractors and, 10 99 there's usually and, I think, I guess in general, The, The, standard practice for, most contractors is billing by the hour or hour. Time is, very an important factor. So what have you found has been one of the best practices for tracking that time? Is it the time tracking actions that are in QuickBooks, or [00:27:00] is it something else that, that you found to be a best, Best in class time tracker.
Shanna Quinn: So we touched on it a little last week, but when you're running payroll in QuickBooks, utilizing their own time tracker within that, is, easier. It's obviously less work. You can market billable and then when you approve it, it comes over to your QuickBooks and you just easily can say.
And assign in the profile of that employee that this is their billable hour comes over. Billable hour is 99% of the time there. There's always the 1% in QuickBooks though, so make sure you don't miss that billable hour amount listing there. But it is the easier way to go. And I do think that for the most part, even though my mind still keeps calling it TSheets, sorry, now QBO time.[00:28:00]
I think it's pretty user friendly from a, from the guys perspective in the field. There's, it's pretty, to the point limited. They just wanna punch in and be done and then punch out when they're done, even some of our clients who have on the, I will be kind older side and have like old flip phones, not new flip phones because those are our wifi enabled, but we've we've gotten used phones from others and we have a wifi connector on each job site for those for those employees to be able to connect.
Through that extra device and log their time.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Some of the the conveniences of, a, QuickBooks time is, that geofencing option where you can set up a perimeter essentially on your, on the job site. Somebody who is [00:29:00] using QuickBooks time, they physically are there.
And the phone crosses that. Fence, so to speak, and says, Hey, it looks like you're on the job. Would you like to clock in? And then all they have to do is just tap. Yes. And now they're logged in at that, time. That time is now started. Yeah. And then lo and behold, when they leave physically it says, looks like you're leaving.
Would you like to clock out? And then they just tap they affirm that.
Shanna Quinn: I actually really like about the QuickBooks time too is Akio from TSheets that I set up with a lot of our clients to say if the job site was, if their time on the job site was incident free. Which has been a really great tool for us to track even by employee, especially when you've got like reoccurring things where the employees, like constantly, some, for some reason harming themselves, we're able [00:30:00] to track it back day and time.
Okay. Robert for some reason really likes to find the nails with, we, need to have a conversation with him about thicker shoes or something just from that perspective too, having those custom fields that are, you can make required before they even can clock out, they have to enter.
The incident free, yes or no. And then obviously the cost code associated to the labor that they're performing, which you're able to filter by job as well not just by. So I could say, yeah, we have all these Cox codes, but at this place we're only doing this, and this. So I, they don't need to run through and memorize a hundred and something codes of labor.
They're just gonna be performing 20. And so we can go in and say, assign these 20 codes of labor to this job. [00:31:00]
Dan DeLong: Makes sense. Now one thing that has slightly confused me over the years is. On time, you're able to associate a service item, but you're also able to put in a billable rate. Right?
For that person. So how does that, how does that equate to. The, workflow, right? If they're using a service item and it's got a price associated with that service item or labor item, but then the person doing the work actually has a billable rate, who wins? In that case when you're then putting that time back on, on the invoice to bill back to the customer.
Shanna Quinn: So the rate is assigned to employee level when you're setting up labor, internal labor codes [00:32:00] in QuickBooks as a product service I would not assign it a rate because you don't want it to be associated to a fixed rate. You want the billable rate of the person, and that is performing those tasks to be what it picks up when you go to approve and add that time entry onto an invoice.
Dan DeLong: Got it. So the billable rate is, what's gonna is what's gonna win unless you have a rate associated with
Shanna Quinn: either, if you have conflicting, honestly, I've never set it up, so I guess I just wouldn't even know. But I would believe because it comes back associated to a time sheet associated to an employee, that it's the billable rate that gets grabbed.
'cause we're also, we're not checking the box that says that. Because it's an employee, we're not invoicing or we're not, we're not billing or paying that it's not a payable item. It's gonna get automatically as a payroll [00:33:00] item, it's going to get grabbed and put into field wages based off of our payroll mapping.
Dan DeLong: Got it. Okay. So the plot thickens when it's an employee versus versus a subcontract.
Shanna Quinn: Yes. Yeah. And you can have subcontractor rates under the vendor profiles Yeah. Of what their billable rate is.
Dan DeLong: And, there is a list in desktop that doesn't exist in, QuickBooks Online, which I think nobody.
Nobody used, I would get maybe one call every five years about this billable rate list or billing rate list that's in, yeah, that's in QuickBooks. Desktop. That just doesn't exist. But the whole concept is that you would bill back to the customer. Based on who did the work. Because if you have, an artisan as opposed to an apprentice, [00:34:00] they're gonna pay the customer will ultimately pay more for that level of craftsmanship, right?
Shanna Quinn: Absolutely. Yeah. If you've got a project manager and then you've got a carpenter, their rates are gonna be different, but they're also likely performing different tasks on that job site.
Yeah. Yeah they're, gonna differ based off of that, and they're calculated and we calculate them out for a lot of our clients. We revisit it quarterly. I think we also touched on this last week. But we do it based off of what we're paying that per a hundred dollars per hour or dollar that you spend from an insurance standpoint for your workers' comp rate.
So what their pay is, what the taxes are from an employer costs. We take into account the insurance that it costs, how much we're paying an insurance to that person. And then we talk, talked about benefits, so if they've got cell phone allowances and, stuff like that, keep [00:35:00] all that in mind when you're, building out what your billable rate is.
Using Purchase Orders and Advanced Features
---
Dan DeLong: Ah, and then, we haven't really talked about purchases that, are made that you want to track those expenses back. But do you find that the purchase order module is, necessary to use? Or is it just really just tracking expenses, as like cash purchases as opposed to bills and those types of things?
Or again, does it depend.
Shanna Quinn: I'll tell you this until recently when I started playing around with the new changes in advance with their estimate and being able to convert to pos and stuff, that's got some fun stuff to it for me. I haven't played with it a whole lot.
Dan DeLong: No that's, not fun.
Sarcasm, right?
Shanna Quinn: No's Fun. Fun as in oh look, it works. And it's usable [00:36:00] down the road from a reporting standpoint, right? But most of our clients don't use the purchase orders within Quick Box. Actually, none of our clients use purchase orders within Quick Box. If they're doing purchase orders, they're using a job costing platform.
To, manage those expenses. Then have it tracked by the job supervisor, approved by the job supervisor, and then converts that to a bill. Then it comes into QuickBooks.
Dan DeLong: Got it. So I guess the advantage of. Especially something, somebody using QuickBooks Online Advanced if they are using purchase orders specifically inside of QuickBooks is you have the, if you have those approval processes that you can, put in so that you have that oversight, inside of advanced.
Is there, other than the approval [00:37:00] process are there advanced features that you. That you found that and I'm not saying advanced, meaning that they're advanced in general, but inside of QuickBooks Online Advanced, are there features that, that have you're really, it's like you wish you would've seen it sooner and, now you're incorporate incorporating that with, your other clients.
Shanna Quinn: Yeah. The s well, and I think that too, they this, that the rollouts have not been consistent of like the updates that they make. So if maybe. And obviously I'm not doing estimating versus actual from a poor client perspective in my own books. But the other day I'm rewriting my 2026 contracts to get out to all my clients tonight.
Hopefully. [00:38:00] And one of the things that I was seeing was our clients that do book build or remodel on client owned lots, not their own. So all of those numbers fall on the p and l. The advanced could be a functionality, it could be something with that estimate versus actual, and that audit tracking capability.
It could be something that we're able to use with our clients instead of building out the custom job workbooks. However, I will say that right after I had my first phone call with one of our clients yesterday to show my excitement about, hey, we could save you money on these per job workbooks by doing it here.
She didn't like it because she likes the ability and the workbooks to go. We call it her yellow boxes. So she would yellow box it and then send us a comment and ask us to look into something or [00:39:00] change this to this. And you can obviously have that communication with them through advance. That level of communication doesn't exist down to that transaction level.
I, the first call didn't go so well. But I'm hoping that as I continue to have these conversations with our clients, that they will be a little bit more on board and we can find a workaround for fixing those. Hey, if we have to have a specific conversation, an adjustment made on a core transaction basis, what's our, what else can we do?
What can we create to still have that level of communication and tracking? That we can go back to
Dan DeLong: and,
that seems to be the case, right? When you, find a feature or function or workflow that's in QuickBooks that they've created for you, and then you present that to the customer, there is [00:40:00] you know this what is it gonna take for me to transition my workflows and what am I giving up?
That I can't do inside of it. I need my yellow boxes right. In
Shanna Quinn: this. Yeah. And yeah, when you're talking about transaction specifics, or even just that level of detail that we build out in our, job workbooks for our clients. We're doing, there's a lot of information and you can see it in different ways that we've built out because I have a template and we're just using that in customizing it.
It is different. It's not that it's not better or worse, it is just that it is different. My, I'm now trying to see. Okay. I do think that this is still a better direction to go in. 'cause it obviously does eliminate potential for human error when we're building out those workbooks. One [00:41:00] one formula goes awry and you're like where's that formula wrong?
Which box is not math right now? And it can throw off the whole workbook I do think trying to utilize the one product and put everything through that is going to be essential in the coming year for our clients. But now my goal is to, what else can I offer to them to still have that back and forth communication.
Dan DeLong: Got it. So any other thoughts you have about, set up in, in this before we get into the nitty gritty, of, actually doing the work inside, of QuickBooks any other things that you can think of that, that you wanna point out in the, setup phase or the setup part of your engagements with your clients?[00:42:00]
Shanna Quinn: I think just knowing the settings when we get into the nitty gritty, we'll dig more into that, making sure that you're checking the boxes that need to get checked in that account settings to make sure what you wanna utilize and set up a certain way is being done correctly or populates into your QuickBooks.
'cause not everything is already billable. Things like that, you could put your markup into your QuickBooks and say, I want it all to get marked up. So there's, there are, I think when we get into the nitty gritty, that's when I can go and my, and do my tangents on everything. And you get, and that's what we're gonna into that down, you're gonna be like Shauna.
Dan DeLong: And that's what we're gonna talk about next week, is actually capturing costs the right way. So we will expand on the setup, the settings. That are actually inside of QuickBooks online. We're talking concepts here the, these past [00:43:00] couple weeks now. Moving forward, then we'll dive into the product and show around or walk around some of these, actual workflows.
So look forward to that next week. Yeah, as we talk about that. But I did wanna ask you about B four cg, right?
Bookkeepers for Contractors Group (B4CG)
---
Dan DeLong: Which is the bookkeepers for, contractors group, that you've created. What has. It's been a whole week. What has changed since since we've talked about Atlanta?
Shanna Quinn: Oh my gosh. I have I think just the Intuit conference getting there and, networking a little bit more. I've been exposed to so many more applications that I could find super beneficial to a firm perspective, but also for the trades in different [00:44:00] ways. So I've just been having so many phone calls.
And it's all great. It's all exciting. So really the partner program and opportunities for our members just continues to grow. As far as. The tech stacks and, other revenue opportunities as the account, as the accountant or firm owner for referring things to your clients. The fee for CG is really just it's just blossoming.
And this, I think I even initially thought it would turn down because my initial was, I just want. I want other accounting professionals to learn how to support these special trades and how to support them properly. But I'm also doing a I. It's a blog, but it's an interviews type of blog posting where [00:45:00] one of my older largest clients, the one that you helped me to convert desktop to online.
We are actually doing an interview next week where we're taping it so that I can teach others and he can provide feedback on how to support a company of that level and of that size as an independent accounting professional. 'cause I don't think that, I don't think that when you start out as a firm owner, you're not thinking that the possibilities of supporting somebody of that size is, it comes to mind.
But if you've got the knowledge, you've got the experience and drive you can certainly. Be that micro CFO to a large company, and they were 67 million revenue on an annual basis. Last year. This year they almost doubled. The opportunity is are there but it is knowing that it's there and how to, do it correctly.
Dan DeLong: And then [00:46:00] ultimately when when B for CG is, is, It got its own legs and it's on, its, it's on its way. You will have a community of accounting professionals so that when, a, prospective client comes in, you'll be able to vet them and, do a matchmaking if it's not something that.
You want to take on right away, or you, Shauna doesn't want to take it on, but you have now a basically a team of, vetted accounting professionals that you already know. They're a level of expertise and you'll be able to align like a matchmaking service
Shanna Quinn: I'm calling, a matchmaker of margins.
Dan DeLong: Oh, there we go.
Shanna Quinn: There.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Shanna Quinn: Yeah. I'm really excited. That part rolls out [00:47:00] January. And so we'll start taking basically all prospects that are even just coming at my firm, bookkeeping for contractors. We'll start to all flow through the new company and we'll. We will vet the caller, we'll vet the the trade business owner that's reaching out, looking to it.
And we'll be able to use that against our membership community to see who would be a good fit and then be able to pair them up. So you know. The referrals are gonna be all sizes, so it's not all just gonna be like a small pop,
Dan DeLong: 67 million, right?
Shanna Quinn: I can't promise that there's always gonna be a like a lot of 'em, but the opportunities are there.
And it is it is very exciting. That part too has been a lot and I'm trying to put as much effort. The trade business owners just as much as I'm trying [00:48:00] to the community and, references and all of that, relationships and tech stacks from a accounting professional standpoint as well.
Dan DeLong: Awesome.
Conclusion and Next Steps
---
Dan DeLong: So we will continue this conversation next week where we're actually get in, lift the Hood and take a look at QuickBooks Online and some of those things and work workflows and best practices to capture all those costs correctly. Hopefully,
Shanna Quinn: I'm actually building a custom background for this conversation too.
Ooh,
Dan DeLong: so it's not your pool, that's not your pool. That is a
Shanna Quinn: good looking pool.
Dan DeLong: It's, yeah. Yeah.
Shanna Quinn: It's a little small, but
Dan DeLong: it does look refreshing. Alright, everybody join who watched today. Appreciate you joining us. Thank you today and we'll see you next time on the workshop Wednesday and hope everybody has [00:49:00] a great week.
[00:50:00]
