Job Status Feature in QuickBooks Leaves Much to Be Desired

QuickBooks Contractor Edition has been highly publicized as the ideal affordable software package for small contractors.  And it does offer a job costing feature; however, producing standard job costing reports is no easy manner in QuickBooks, particularly when one desires to produce Work-in-Progress and Completed-Contracts schedules.

For instance, I cannot fathom why QuickBooks failed to allow the user to filter job costing, profit and loss by jobs, and job summary reports by job status, even though there is a field for status entry under “Jobs” in the “Additional Info” tab.  Under the caption “Job Status”, the user is provided with the following designations:

  1. None
  2. Pending
  3. Awarded
  4. In progress
  5. Closed
  6. Not awarded

I would have preferred QuickBooks to classify jobs in the following conventional categories of job status:

  1. Pending
  2. In progress
  3. Completed
  4. Closed

And then to allow the user in QuickBooks to filter job progress and profitability reports by these criteria.  If such had been provided by QuickBooks, it would be a snap to produce Work-in-Progress and Completed-Contracts reports on demand, instead of spending considerable time determining which jobs are in progress and which are complete, and then modify each profit and loss by jobs report by being required to select each incomplete or complete job, respectively, under “Modify Report” each time a profit and loss by jobs report is to be generated.  If there existed such a link between job status and job costing reports in the QuickBooks Contractor Editor, Intuit would have hit a home run with contractors.  However, there is no such link between Job Status and the reporting module in QuickBooks, even though job status is found as a filter item in the report modification list.

I have posted questions on the Intuit Community website regarding the inability to produce such reports by modifying the reports by job status; however, never have I received any reply addressing that deficiency in QuickBooks.  Perhaps QuickBooks management should sometimes read the posts in their Question and Answer feature on their website instead of sending out needless surveys asking how they can improve QuickBooks.

This article is provided for informational purposes and is not intended to be construed as legal, accounting, or other professional advice.  For further information, please consult appropriate professional advice from your attorney and certified public accountant. 

Have a tax or an accounting question?  Please feel free to submit it to William Brighenti, Certified Public Accountant, Hartford CPA Accountants.  For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website:  Accountants CPA Hartford.

If and only to the extent that this publication contains contributions from tax professionals who are subject to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, the publisher, on behalf of those contributors, hereby states that any U.S. federal tax advice that is contained in such contributions was not intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose.  The above tax advice was written to support the promotion or marketing of the accounting practice of the publisher and any transaction described herein.  The taxpayer recipients of this offering memorandum should seek tax advice based on their particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

About William Brighenti

William Brighenti is a Certified Public Accountant, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and Certified Business Valuation Analyst. Bill began his career in public accounting in 1979. Since then he has worked at various public accounting firms throughout Connecticut. Bill received a Master of Science in Professional Accounting degree from the University of Hartford, after attending the University of Connecticut and Central Connecticut State University for his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. He subsequently attended Purdue University for doctoral studies in Accounting and Quantitative Methods in Business. Bill has instructed graduate and undergraduate courses in Accounting, Auditing, and other subjects at the University of Hartford, Central Connecticut State University, Hartford State Technical College, and Purdue University. He also taught GMAT and CPA Exam Review Classes at the Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center and at Person-Wolinsky, and is certified to teach trade-related subjects at Connecticut Vocational Technical Schools. His articles on tax and accounting have been published in several professional journals throughout the country as well as on several accounting websites. William was born and raised in New Britain, Connecticut, and served on the City's Board of Finance and Taxation as well as its City Plan Commission. In addition to the blog, Accounting and Taxes Simplified, Bill writes a blog, "The Barefoot Accountant", for the Accounting Web, a Sift Media publication.
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3 Responses to Job Status Feature in QuickBooks Leaves Much to Be Desired

  1. April Gross says:

    Good afternoon,

    We are experiencing this exact issue and our only solution is a V-lookup I write each month to correlate job status with estimates vs actuals. I was curious if you found or have written any update to this article or if you ever received any feedback from Quickbooks.

    Any direction you may have is most appreciated!

    Thank you,
    April Gross

  2. April Gross says:

    Good afternoon,
    We are experiencing this exact issue and our only solution is a V-lookup I write each month to correlate job status with estimates vs actuals. I was curious if you found or have written any update to this article or if you ever received any feedback from Quickbooks.

    Any direction you may have is most appreciated!

    Thank you,
    April Gross

    • Hi April,

      Thank you for reading the article and replying to it.

      Unfortunately, I have not received an answer from Intuit explaining how one can relate a job’s status in the Contractor’s Edition of QuickBooks to job cost reports in order to prepare a Work-in Process schedule for just the jobs still in progress.

      If anyone has, please update my reply.

      Thank you, April. Good question.

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