For Service Firms, effective project tracking
& monitoring are critical controls,...
Service firms delivering technical or project-oriented services (e.g, engineers, architects, information technology, consultants, etc.) have complex financial tracking needs. Your ability to keep projects within budget constraints is a major key to profitability, so all aspects of labor costs need to be computed, time & costs assigned to individual projects, and actuals compared to estimated costs via timely internal reporting systems.
When a customer wants a specific result, or a product, created by a service firm:
- A series of job stages or actions must be defined, and then occur, to produce the desired outcome in a timely manner.
- Multiple employees work through the various stages of the project.
- Portions of the project may be outsourced or subcontracted, and specialized materials may need to be acquired.
Time and cost over-runs, and thus thin gross margins, are a constant risk. As a result, if you want to know the profitability of a given job before, during and after completion, all income and related costs must be recorded.
That's why clients turn to Info Plus – because they're seeking an easy-to-use accounting system that:
- Creates job estimates.
- Records and tracks service orders.
- Supports purchasing.
- Produces accurate job-cost information.
- Tracks progress on jobs and monitors financial results.
- Highlights variances that could impact your profit margins.
When you're intimately familiar with your job-cost and company financial numbers, you’ll create more accurate estimates and make smarter buying and pricing decisions. That’s the real way to make a lasting improvement in your bottom line!
Drawing on thousands of hours of service-firm experience, Info Plus will help you set up your accounting system to:
- Assign materials and sub-contracted costs to jobs.
- Track internal time by job (and job stage) and assign payroll and payroll tax costs to individual projects.
- Track estimate vs. actual results (by job stage).
- Perform standard accounting functions within an integrated accounting system.
- Create a variety of valuable financial reports.
You also may need more advanced features such as:
Sales orders (work orders).- Purchase orders.
- Budgeting.
- Payroll preparation and related tax filings.
- Fixed assets tracking.
- Customizing and printing forms.
- Assignment of fully burdened labor cost to jobs.
At Info Plus, we help you tailor reasonably-priced QuickBooks and related solutions to match the specific way you do business. Better yet, we teach you to manage your information in-house — often by clerical-level employees.
Whether you're taking advantage of individual or small-group training, or using our 24/7 online training sessions to fine-tune your system, master short-cuts, or take the next step, Info Plus helps you eliminate errors, create financial clarity, and maximize revenue.
We offer one-to-one support and consulting services, as well as industry-specific QuickBooks online training seminars, to clients throughout the U.S.
