• Accounting operations – What critical functions are typically handled by the internal management accounting department?
• Fragmented accounting systems? What is “accounting integration”, and how can it help your company?
• Accounting productivity and accounting benefits: Are you benefiting from 29 Ways that you can make your accounting or bookkeeping function pay for itself? For example:
• How can monitoring job-costs improve your bottom line?
• Can an accounting system actually improve employee performance?
• What is the best way to monitor overhead costs?
• How does being in touch with your job costs impact your pricing decisions?
• What kinds of jobs are winners and which are losers?
• Should you expand? Shrink? Move? Stay? Buy? Sell?
• Are controls really necessary for smaller companies?
• How can you use your numbers to improve your cash flow?
• How can a good accounting system enhance relationships?

• Accounting as Baseball – What are the four (4) simple bases to touch that can help to create a home run in the business leadership training game?
• How can “Management by Exception” increase your business and project management skills?
• Choosing the right accounting software – What should you look for?
• Accounting technology changes – To what extent, and why, has in-house accounting software invaded the market?
• Accounting project management – What are 2 major issues to consider before, during, and after adopting an accounting solution?
• Keeping score – What are the 8 major types of accounts that could show up in your management accounting reports?
• What’s timing got to do with it? – Accounting methodology, accounting practices, debates, and opinions (e.g., Cash accounting vs. Accrual accounting).
• “Who’s on First”? – What 7 accounting industry service provider options are available to you & what does each bring to the table?
• Team players – What criteria should you use to select the right financial accounting professionals?
• What special “Rules of Play” (e.g., accounting processes, and accounting challenges) apply to construction industry accounting (e.g., construction cost accounting, construction project accounting timing issues, Work in Process, etc.)?

Self-administered (voluntary) “Quick Quizzes” are provided at regular intervals throughout this online training course, so you quickly receive positive reinforcement that you’ve either mastered the material, or alternatively, you will see immediate feedback that you should stop and re-view the materials presented. Throughout the course, you will be offered the opportunity to send questions regarding the course material to our office via e-mail.

• Outline typical responsibilities of an internal accounting or bookkeeping function.
• Identify why and how your financial information accounting system increases or decreases your profits.
• Implement key business management controls based upon management accounting and job cost reports.
• Understand how recent changes in accounting technology have dramatically increased the availability of critical day-to-day data that can help you run your business more effectively.
• Recognize the various risks and issues that accompany in-house accounting systems.
• Identify the background and roles of various types and levels of accounting support professionals.
• Be acquainted with various accounting challenges specific to the construction industry.

• Exactly what kinds of management accounting reports might you want to see as your end product?
• What are the two (2) primary report-display levels for QuickBooks® data – and when is each level appropriate?
• Specific construction accounting report examples – what do they mean? And how can you use each of these reports to enhance your business results?
• Profit & Loss Report – How can you “get up close and comfortable” with Gross Profit results and company overhead information?
• Balance Sheet – What information you want to know before you meet with your banker?
• Receivables & Payables – How can you use these reports to manage and enhance your cash flow?
• Profit & Loss by Job Report – How can you quickly review summarized income, costs, and gross profit by job? (Illustrated: Development & Spec Homes, Custom Homes, Remodeling Projects, Handyman jobs)
• What kinds of accounting issues and opinions surround Work in Process (WIP)?
• Time Reports – Does time = money?
  • How do employee hours, entered into QuickBooks® timesheets, become the building blocks for payroll?
  • Can employee costs and labor burden automatically be assigned to jobs?
  • How can Time Reports be used to:
  1. Monitor estimated vs. actual hours as a job progresses?
  2. Determine “billable” vs. “non-billable” hours?
  3. Preview hours before payroll is actually prepared? (A variety of Time Report formats are illustrated.)
  • Monitor estimated vs. actual hours as a job progresses?
  • Determine “billable” vs. “non-billable” hours?
  • Preview hours before payroll is actually prepared? (A variety of Time Report formats are illustrated.)
• Job Cost (by Job Stage) and Profitability Report – Is it possible to show, in detail and in order of construction (e.g., site prep, footings & foundations, framing, roofing, etc.), actual job income and costs to date?
• Estimated vs. Actual Income and Cost (by Job Stage) Report – How accurate is your estimating? Are you on target as each job progresses? Exactly where do you fine-tune your results and profits? These nitty-gritty reports are absolutely essential to achieving effective front-end pricing, controlling change orders, and directing jobs on a day-to-day basis!
• What are the 8 specific ways you can use a variance report to add value to your company?
• How do you create a “big picture” report?  What is an accounting “drill down”? (No hand tools required!)
• What do you do if you need to make corrections to recent transactions?

• What “drives” the reports we’ve been looking at?
• What is the importance of structural design in an accounting system?
• The Top-10 QuickBooks® Design Elements – an accounting systems design & structure overview:
1. The Chart of Accounts – The Chart is equivalent to what stage of constructing a home?
2. The Item List – How can you construct the Item List to track and subtotal detailed job costs?
3. The Item List – Which transactions require the use of items?
4. The Customer:Job List – Why is the Customer:Job List so important, and how should it be used?
5. The Vendor List – What kinds of useful information can be entered into, and derived from, our Vendor List?
6. The Employee List – Where does the Employee List fit into the payroll scenario?
7. The Payroll Item List – How do Payroll Items interact with Time Sheets, the Employee List, and the Payroll?
8. Customer Types List, and
9. Job Types Lists – How can you use these Lists to provide valuable niche, trend, and profitability analysis (and save loads of data entry time as well)?
10. Custom Fields – How and when can they be useful?

• What kinds of circumstances might cause us to create a new QuickBooks® company file?
• How long should it take to create a new file, and how difficult is the process?
• What kinds of decisions will we face when we create a new company file?
• How many company files are you allowed to establish?
• What kinds of data can you easily transfer from one company file to another?
• How do you know if your company file is beginning to become too large?
• Must you always enter opening balances into a new company file?

Self-administered (voluntary) “Quick Quizzes” are provided at regular intervals throughout this online training course, so you quickly receive positive reinforcement that you’ve either mastered the material, or alternatively, you will see immediate feedback that you should stop and re-view the materials presented. Throughout the course, you will be offered the opportunity to send questions regarding the course material to our office via e-mail.

• Recognize the value of designing your accounting system with useful management accounting reports as the goal.
• Decide under which circumstances summary or detailed reports are most appropriate.
• Understand and read 7 specific types of management accounting reports that are especially useful to businesses in the construction industry.
• Extract a “big picture” report with a single mouse click, or be able to immediately see (and correct) an underlying transaction while viewing a report.
• Understand how specific Lists and Custom Fields integrate in your QuickBooks® accounting system and how they become the building blocks that allow you to create the end results that you are looking for.
• Determine when it is a good idea to start a new QuickBooks® file, and what must be entered into a new company data file.
• Observe the screens and critical decision points encountered when creating a new data file in QuickBooks®.

• What types of accounts should be used to build a useful Profit & Loss report?
• What kinds of account organization and relationships provide the best management accounting reports?
• What are, and how do we create “collapsed” and “expanded” reports? And who benefits from each?
• How can we structure our Chart of Accounts to effortlessly create useful totals and sub-totals?
• The pros and cons of general, summary-style accounts vs. detailed accounts.
• Is it necessary to use account numbers in your QuickBooks® file?
• What are typical numbering schemes for accounts, and exactly where would an account number be placed?
• Is there a way to differentiate “non-postable” accounts from regular “postable” accounts?
• What is the technique that directs QuickBooks® to automatically compute gross profit on reports?
• Should you include job-stages (e.g., Site Prep, Foundation, Framing, Windows, etc.) in your Chart of Accounts?
• What account types should you use for non-operating income and expense such as interest and company taxes, and why?
• When you just don’t know where to post a transaction, what should you do?
• Is there a good place to post and track VOIDED checks?
• How do we create, and position, a NEW account?

• How should Items be organized and grouped? And why?
• What “special treatment” can you add to titles in your Item List?
• What are the different kinds of Items, and which would be most useful for the construction industry?
• What is the importance of “two-sided” Items, and when should they be used?
• Should you use numbers and/or codes in conjunction with job-stage Items? Are certain sets of codes better than others?
• What special types of Items can help with the Estimating and Invoicing process?
• Should we link Items to Cost & Income accounts, or to Work-in-Process & Liability accounts?

• Exactly what is a Customer, what is a Job, and what is their relationship?
• How do we add a new Customer? A new Job?
• Should we use Classes in addition to Customer:Job names when we enter transactions?
• What are Customer Types and Job Types and how can they be used to provide valuable information while simultaneously reducing data entry time?
• What’s the easiest way to handle duplicate Customer and/or Job names?
• How do you keep the Customer:Job list sorted so that reports are “clean”?
• What 3 groups should be consulted (and arrive at agreement), regarding Customer and Job naming formats?
• What should be done with production-related costs that can’t be assigned to a job?
• Must EVERY entry be assigned to a job?
• Is there a way, in QuickBooks®, to store a series of notes about a particular customer or job?

• What are some typical payment “terms” included on Invoices and Bills, and what do they mean?
• How is the Terms feature used in QuickBooks®, and how do we find and access the Terms List?
• What is the major difference between the two types of terms that we can create?
• What choices are we asked to make when we set up each Term and how do the answers impact our results?
• What should we do if the underlying information in some of our pre-existing Terms are not correct?

Self-administered (voluntary) “Quick Quizzes” are provided at regular intervals throughout this online training course, so you quickly receive positive reinforcement that you’ve either mastered the material, or alternatively, you will see immediate feedback that you should stop and re-view the materials presented. Throughout the course, you will be offered the opportunity to send questions regarding the course material to our office via e-mail.

• Determine which kinds of accounts and cost categories should be utilized to create the most useful Profit & Loss reports.
• Arrange your accounts so that you get the most “bang for the buck” when you create your management accounting reports.
• Create new accounts, deal with “mystery” transactions, and post voided checks to a special account.
• Take advantage of features built into the Item List that most users are not aware of.
• Identify the circumstances which require the use of Items, and how Items are especially significant to the construction industry for job-costing and estimating information.
• Decide how to integrate job-cost codes into your accounting system.
• Maximize the organization, usability, and reporting value for users of your Customer:Job List.
• Distinguish when a transaction must be assigned to a Customer or Job.
• Clean up a disorganized Customer:Job List.
• Create accurate, useful Terms so that Aging Reports will be correct.
• Recognize how to use the Terms List to reduce data entry time.

• How can you use the “Auto-recall” feature in QuickBooks® to make data entry faster and more accurate?
• If you have a vendor to whom you make varying kinds of payments, how can you still take full advantage of the “Auto Recall” feature in QuickBooks®?
• When establishing a new Vendor, should you enter the amount of their first Bill as the “Opening Balance” in the Vendor record?
• What is the stress-free and “no fail” way to obtain information (required by the IRS) from a 1099 vendor?
• How do you use a special QuickBooks® feature to establish automatic reminders to warn you when your trade or sub-contractors’ insurances are expiring? (works for all QuickBooks® versions – Pro and above)
• What’s the fool-proof method to ensure that your customer ID number will automatically print in the memo field of Checks and Bill Payments?
• What’s the easiest way to make sure that the correct due dates always show on a Vendor’s Bill – without having to manually enter the due date on each and every Bill?
• What should you do if you find that you have duplicate Vendor names? Is it necessary to correct all of the entries assigned to one or the other of the Vendors or is there an easier way?

• How many variations on a given form (e.g., an Invoice, Purchase Order, Estimate) can we create?
• Is it necessary to build forms “from the ground up”, or can we utilize pre-built templates as a starting point?
• Can forms be “colorized”?
• What is the fastest and easiest way to incorporate our company logo in forms?
• How do we set certain information in a form to be visible on the screen but not print on a form?
• Is it possible to print certain information on one form, but NOT have it print on another form? (E.g., To have Cost and Price print on one Estimate, but “Price only” print on another?)
• If you think that it would be useful to enter or see an “anticipated vendor” for specific costs on an Estimate, how can you add that information to the Estimate form?
• How do we add Custom Fields to forms?
• How do we add <1,000 characters of custom wording to a form so that the wording shows each time we create that particular form?
• What techniques could you employ if you want to include >1,000 characters of “contract wording” to your forms?
• Which feature in QuickBooks® allows you to change field sizes, fonts, titles, and borders?
• What process should you follow if you want to add new fields to forms?
• From which versions of QuickBooks® can you preview a form before saving it?

• How do we instruct QuickBooks® to post recurring transactions?
• When you want to modify the instructions for a memorized transaction, how do you change the “programmed” posting method?
• How do you modify the contents of a memorized transaction without actually posting it?
• What technique will help you to quickly spot your memorized transactions when reviewing detailed transaction reports?

• How and why might we want to create memorized reports?
• What are some useful ways to name memorized reports?
• How do we establish a pre-determined “set” of specific reports that can be created at the touch of a button (so we don’t have to create reports one-at-a-time)?
• Are there any reasons why you might want to see memorized reports displayed on the screen before printing?
• How can we create an icon to instantly display one or two frequently used reports?

Self-administered (voluntary) “Quick Quizzes” are provided at regular intervals throughout this online training course, so you quickly receive positive reinforcement that you’ve either mastered the material, or alternatively, you will see immediate feedback that you should stop and re-view the materials presented. Throughout the course, you will be offered the opportunity to send questions regarding the course material to our office via e-mail.

• Use a special Preference in QuickBooks® to speed up vendor data entry.
• Easily obtain required information from 1099 vendors.
• Establish reminders to warn you when trade contractors’ insurances are expiring.
• Add your company logo to forms.
• Determine which fields you wish printed on forms, vs. which fields you see on the screen.
• Customize the appearance and content of a variety of forms in QuickBooks® (e.g., Invoice, Estimate, Purchase Order, Statements, etc.).
• Create Memorized Transactions in QuickBooks®.
• Instruct QuickBooks® how, and when, to post memorized transactions.
• Edit the content of, and/or the instructions for, memorized transactions.
• Decide when, and how, to memorize a report in QuickBooks®.
• Build report “sets” that can be displayed or printed quickly and easily.

• Exactly what are Company File Preferences, and why are they important?
• Where are the Company File Preferences located, and who can change them?
• Which users are impacted by changes in Company File Preferences?
• Can Company File Preferences be modified as your company’s needs change?

• Accounting Preferences – How does the “Show lowest sub-account only” selection make it easier to see selected accounts?
• Bills Preferences – Why should you, or should you not, “Automatically Use Discounts and Credits”?
• Checking Preferences – What option relating to “printing dates” on checks will be best for your circumstance?
• Desktop View Preferences – How can you modify what information is included on your Home Page?
• Finance Charges Preferences – What are the pros and cons of charging Finance Charges on overdue accounts?
• General Preferences – Is it a good idea to update name information “on the fly”? I.e., making a change from a transaction, rather than going back into the underlying record?
• Integrated Applications Preferences – How can you allow (or block) access by third-party applications to your QuickBooks® file?
• Items & Inventory Preferences – Which types of construction companies should, or shouldn’t use Inventory Items, and why should the “Inventory and Purchase Orders” feature usually be turned ON?
• Jobs & Estimates Preferences – Is it a good idea to turn on the Progress Invoicing feature, and why or why not?
• Payroll Preferences – Exploration deferred to payroll seminar.
• Reminders Preferences – Which information is normally more useful to see in detail, and which is better to either not see, or view only at the Summary level?
• Reports & Graphs Preferences – How can you “trick” QuickBooks into printing reports without account numbers? And how can you make QB show negative numbers in red and with parentheses?
• Sales & Customers Preferences – What does the “Use Undeposited Funds as a default deposit to account” choice mean?
• Sales Tax Preferences – What elements should you consider in relationship to the Sales Tax screen?
• Send forms Preferences – What forms can you e-mail directly from QuickBooks, and how can you make the process easier?
• Service Connection Preferences – How do your choices in this screen impact the way in which QuickBooks is updated?
• Tax: 1099 Preferences – How do choices from this screen interact with your vendor list to create year-end 1099 forms?
• Time Tracking Preferences How do choices in this screen interact with your Time Sheets?

Self-administered (voluntary) “Quick Quizzes” are provided at regular intervals throughout this online training course, so you quickly receive positive reinforcement that you’ve either mastered the material, or alternatively, you will see immediate feedback that you should stop and re-view the materials presented. Throughout the course, you will be offered the opportunity to send questions regarding the course material to our office via e-mail.

• Access, and examine, your existing Company Preferences settings.
• Recognize how decisions in Company Preferences flow through to operating and accounting results.
• Understand the need for a thoughtfully considered, and properly-designed, set of Company Preferences.
• Compare and contrast your needs to the “general recommendations” provided within the seminar.
• Complete many of the decisions regarding Company Preferences within your company, based on the way that you do business and how you wish to see information displayed.
• Recognize the specific circumstances for which you should seek professional accounting or legal assistance before finalizing your Company Preferences.