Ever been working away on a job and asked yourself whether you’re making any money on it? Well, today is a slightly miserable rainy December day in Melbourne, so I'm making it "Job tracking in AccountRight Live" day. I'll get the t-shirts out to you later.
I’m going to start really simply and provide examples that cover the different ways you can track your job activity and performance. Firstly, “jobs” can be all sorts of different activities. You could be a web designer building a website for a client, a chippy installing a kitchen or a wedding caterer preparing for someone’s special day.
Creating jobs
Creating jobs is really easy in AccountRight, start by choosing Jobs from the Lists menu.
Then add the details. Like I’ve done for this pretend wedding I’m catering for.
Later, we’ll look at why selecting Track Reimbursables in Standard and Plus is such as great idea.
Grouping your jobs to keep them tidy
You can group jobs under a header. In a nutshell, header jobs allow you to group similar jobs together. So, say you’re a chippy who does a heap of jobs for new home developments. You could split your jobs into groups by home building company (Metricon, Porterdavis, Henley) and track which group is the most profitable for you.
Definitely handy, hey? (Once you get some figures in there, of course.) You’ll know which section of your business is going well and which is maybe not going so well.
Tracking the ins and outs of your jobs
Now that you’ve created jobs, tracking what you make for them is as easy as adding the job numbers to all transactions.
Bought something specific that you want the client to pay you back for? Make sure you’ve ticked the Track Reimbursables option on the job. (Remember that?) Then add the job number to the purchase order or Spend Money transaction when you record it.
The cost is then added to the To Be Reimbursed list, waiting for you to invoice the client for the money.
And when you do, just click Reimburse to add the item you want payment for to the invoice. Remembering to get reimbursed has never been so easy.
Working out whether you’re making money
Now for the exciting part, finding out whether your jobs are profitable.
There’s a handy little report that’ll help you here – the Job Profit and Loss statement, that’s just full of great information. Take a look.
So, don’t be left wondering whether you’re actually making money – find out for sure with AccountRight’s job tracking. For something so easy, it’s definitely powerful.
Loving learning about how to get the most out of your software? Subscribe to this blog, or add an RSS feed (you can do this by clicking Blog Options on The AccountRight Blog homepage). We’ll be blogging regularly with handy hints and tips to make you an MYOB champion.
