Articles & Tips
by Melanie Hodgdon
As a certified QuickBooks advisor, I am asked by a lot of contractors who are already using QuickBooks Pro ($300 retail) whether upgrading to the Premier Contractor Edition ($500) makes sense for them. The answer, not surprisingly, depends on who's asking the question.
What's Different About Premier
QuickBooks Premier for Contractors attempts to provide a complete setup — including a Chart of Accounts, an Items List, and a Class List — that allows the user to avoid many of the decisions that would have to be made setting up QuickBooks Pro. It also contains a Contractor-specific menu of tasks such as estimating, invoicing, entering bills, and paying employees, and a special Contractor menu of job-related reports that are easy to access by a novice user. Because it's based on the Premier version of QuickBooks (a more powerful version, just as Pro is more powerful than Basic), it boasts some extra bells and whistles. How relevant they are to your needs is questionable (see 'QuickBooks Contractor Business Tools,' below).
QuickBooks Contractor Business Tools The Premier version provides analytical business tools not found in Pro: |
QuickBooks 2021 Comparison: Pro, Premier, Enterprise, Accountant Around 30 million small businesses in the United States use QuickBooks as their primary accounting software. As every business has its specific requirements, QuickBooks editions can be categorically put into four categories: QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, QuickBooks.
- QuickBooks Pro 2016 Small Business Accounting Software helps you organize your business finances and accounting on a Windows PC. Easily get set up, learn, and use. No accounting knowledge is necessary and you can quickly import your data from a spreadsheet.
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- Quick books pro versus pro plus annual When you see 'Plus' that is a Package of services, including support and the rights to annual program Upgrade (2019 - 2020 - 2021). That isn't the same as Updates and that isn't the same as Owning QB outright; think of the 'Plus' Subscription program as a Lease arrangement.
- QuickBooks Pro vs Premier – Final Thoughts. The bottom line is, you can rest assured knowing QuickBooks has a product that can fulfill your accounting needs. In the case of QuickBooks Pro vs Premier, for basic accounting functions, you can save a few bucks by going Pro.
QuickBooks Pro offers an open-ended structure that requires the user to fill in what he wants for himself. You can get it to give you virtually everything you want for your company, but it takes work and a high level of understanding of the software.
Which product works best for you depends on several factors: whether you are already using the Pro version; your accounting expertise; and the extent to which you wish to customize the file.
Is Pro working for you? If you're already using the Pro version and it's working, much of the initial advantage of the Contractor edition will be lost to you. Assuming that you elect to keep your existing company file, you will simply upgrade your current software to the Premier version. Because your file already contains the Chart of Accounts, the Items List, and possibly the Class List, you will bypass getting to use what Intuit has set up for you in the Contractor's edition. Once you upgrade your existing file, it will look precisely like Pro, with the exception of the special Contractor activities and reports menus, which you may find convenient. Therefore, only users willing to start a brand-new file will reap the benefits of the pre-existing setup.
Bear in mind, too, that virtually all the Contractor activities in the Premier Contractor edition are located in Pro's Customer, Vendor, and Employee menus, and all the reports listed in the Premier Contractor edition's Contractor Reports menu are also available through Pro, although you need to know more about the software to access or create them.
For example, in Premier for Contractors you will see the following report under the Contractor Reports menu: Billed/Unbilled Hours by Person and Job (see Figure 1). This report shows hours worked on jobs during a designated time period, sorted by employee. The exact same report is available in QuickBooks Pro if you use the standard Jobs & Time report called Time by Name and customize it by placing check marks in the options Billed, Unbilled, and Not Billable. Once memorized, this report could be available to you in Pro by whatever name you wish.
Figure 1. This pre-existing report (left) in Premier Contractor's version shows billed, unbilled, and not billed costs for various jobs, sorted by employee. A modified report from QuickBooks Pro (right) shows the same information; the report can be renamed and saved for ready access.
Premier Chart of Accounts better. On the other hand, if your accounting background is limited and you're coming to QuickBooks as a first-time user, you will certainly avoid some common errors if you use Premier Contractor's preset Chart of Accounts (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Premier for Contractor's preset Chart of Accounts will give a good start to users with no background in accounting. Pro's 'Construction' Chart of Accounts, by contrast, mixes up some direct and indirect costs.
Pro's 'Construction' Chart of Accounts is woefully poor, and actually mixes together job-related and overhead costs. For instance, your customary job-related costs would include labor, materials, subs, and perhaps a fourth catch-all category for equipment rental and other miscellaneous direct job costs. All of these job-related costs should be 'above the line' in the category of accounts called Cost of Goods Sold. That would relegate your truck loan interest, office supplies, and accounting costs to overhead, in accounts categorized as Expense. In Pro, however, you won't find any accounts assigned to Cost of Goods Sold categories, and you'll find Subcontractors and Job Materials set up as Expense accounts and treated the same as office supplies and postage. While easy to correct, users with a limited understanding of accounting may hesitate to make the necessary changes.
Matching the Way You Work
If you truly love customizing to get things just the way you want them, you may find that it takes the same amount of effort to change the pre-existing setup for Premier Contractor as it takes to create your own in Pro. The benefit of having a pre-existing setup that conforms to somebody else's perception of what works depends on how closely that perception matches your own.
It's a lot like estimating software. Many contractors happily put their faith in an estimating package and, after confirming its accuracy, use it year after year. They're willing to excuse its idiosyncrasies or inefficiencies in the name of expediency. Others have long lines of estimating packages sitting on their shelves and have settled on a custom-designed spreadsheet because it feels comfortable, thinks the way they do, and spits out paperwork in a format that appeals to them. Nobody thinks through a job exactly the same way, and some contractors are unwilling to conform to a system that's a mismatch for the way they think. Therefore, if Intuit's idea of how to track information about your business mirrors yours, you'll probably feel comfortable with it.
The preset Items List in Contractor looks a lot like the HomeTech phases, but has some idiosyncrasies, such as single sub-items and a list of items for developers (Figure 3). If you don't like what you see, you can always change things to suit you, but that may negate the advantage of purchasing the more expensive software.
Figure 3. Premier Contractor's preset Items list is similar to the phase list in HomeTech's estimating program. The list can be modified to suit the user, but given the extra cost for Premier, extensive customization would be better done in Pro.
Job-cost reports depend on a blend of Items and Classes in the Contractor version. For every job-related transaction you enter, you must enter the phase by Item, and the kind of charge (labor, materials, subs, equipment rental, and so forth) by Class. The Class List comes preset for you, which means that when you run a job-cost report of Estimated vs. Actual costs for a given job, you will get a 'lump' of costs for each phase until you ask for the details by running the report by Class also (Figure 4). This will give you an analysis for labor, materials, subs, and equipment, but in a wide layout with many columns that I find visually confusing. If you're accustomed to breaking out your labor, material, and sub costs through your Items and using Class tracking for another purpose (such as categorizing the kind of job, customer, or location), then this may feel cumbersome to you.
Figure 4. The preset Classes (top left) in QuickBooks Contractor allow you to expand the lump-sum totals in a job-cost report (tracked by Item alone, top right) into a breakdown by revenue and cost categories (bottom left). However, the report is complex and not particularly useful.
Bear in mind that you can run a P&L by Class, so if you're interested in running a P&L that will compare your profitability for remodeling vs. new construction, or kitchens vs. baths, or residential vs. commercial, or some other breakdown of sales, then it does not make sense to use Classes the way Contractor wants you to when identical information can be achieved via Items.
Bells and Whistles?
New features in Premier for Contractors — like the ability to 'automatically create change orders, invoices, and purchase orders from estimates' — sound very exciting. In actuality, the change-order option is a bit clunky.
Let's say you go into the original estimate, which has a line item for Plans at $100 with a markup of 60 percent, showing on the printed estimate as $160. If you alter the cost for Plans to $200, QuickBooks will automatically apply the 60 percent markup. Now your line-item charge-out price (what the customer will see) has increased to $320, a change of $160. When you save the revised estimate, you will get an option screen (Figure 5) that invites you to let QuickBooks add the change order. Any time you edit the cost of an item with a markup, the Intuit-supplied message will be confusing. The canned comment will read, 'Increased unit cost of 01.1 Plans from $100 to $200. (+$160.00) Net change to estimate +$160.00.' This sticks your markup right under your customer's nose while simultaneously confusing him. Does the change cost $100 or $160? If $160, why mention $100? (It should be noted that if you are estimating an Item for which there is no markup, this is not a problem.)
Figure 5. The change-order function in QuickBooks Contractor adds a note to the revised estimate (top). Note that if you mark up change orders, you will reveal your markup to the customer on the QuickBooks-generated statement (bottom) unless you delete or edit the note. The author prefers to enter change orders manually so the additional amount becomes a separate line item, allowing the builder to invoice for it separately.
If you are using the 'automatic change order' option to save time and don't mind if your customer sees what QuickBooks arbitrarily adds, you're okay. If you prefer to bury your markup, then this option may not work for you unless you go in and edit the text yourself. But how convenient is this 'time-saving' feature if you have to edit the result every time?
Customizing With QuickBooks Pro
This software has been around for over a decade and is designed to be ultraflexible to meet the needs of virtually any business. I have used it for contractors, fishing fleets, retail stores, restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts, a used-car business, and a dental office. Its strength lies in its flexibility. I like to compare it to building a custom home rather than moving into a prebuilt one.
In the setup process, Pro offers you a choice of industry-specific Charts of Accounts (construction, farming, advertising, manufacturing, and so on). If you pick construction from the list, you'll be sharing about 75 percent of the same accounts as the other choices would produce. You build your own Items List from scratch, and if you use Classes it's because you decide you want to track something of specific interest to you.
As with a custom home, you will ideally wind up with something of high quality that has been specifically designed to meet your practical and aesthetic needs. But, as with construction, the greater the number of important decisions you're asked to make, the greater the danger of making mistakes. Fortunately, unlike a construction project, setup errors in QuickBooks are generally easy to correct.
Although suitable for virtually any kind of company, QuickBooks Pro has also incorporated a number of specifically builder-friendly features. They include the ability to set up Jobs under customer names, a designated set of Job reports, and the capacity to easily invoice for time and materials as well as for contract/fixed-price jobs using a variety of invoicing options, including progress payments. Functionally, Pro will do virtually anything that the Premier Contractor edition will do for day-to-day accounting. It doesn't have some of the 'higher functions' that Premier provides; if these functions are important to you, then Pro won't give you what you need.
Chart of Accounts. A listing of your general ledger accounts. Includes those accounts associated with your Profit & Loss Statement (such as income, cost of goods sold, and expenses) and with your Balance Sheet (assets, liabilities, and equity). All transactions eventually affect your Chart of Accounts and contribute to your financial reports. When your accountant asks you for reports on which to do your taxes, he or she will be looking at the dollar values of these accounts. |
Bottom Line
I always tell clients that in order to produce a workable QuickBooks company file and use it properly, they need to know three things: accounting, their specific business needs, and the software itself.
Accounting. The Premier for Contractor version will help you with accounting, though you may still need assistance from an accountant or other qualified resource. Pro's Chart of Accounts for contractors mingles job-related and overhead costs, which is just plain wrong. It provides fewer accounts in its Chart of Accounts than the Premier Contractor edition does, so you'll probably need to add more. If your accounting isn't strong, this could present a problem: The more accounts you need to add, the more errors you may make. Luckily, either version allows you to modify your Chart of Accounts with ease, and you should plan on having to add and remove accounts from either program to suit your company's needs.
Specific business needs. Premier for Contractor purports to understand your needs. If its preconceived notion of how you run your business is spot on, you're in great shape. If you have a different approach, then the amount of customizing you'll need to do may negate the advantage of buying a canned setup. Pro can give you virtually identical flexibility, but you'll have to start from scratch to generate some of the reports that Contractor will give you out of the box. If you use some of the 'higher function' tools that the Premier version offers, then that's a significant advantage.
The software. The two programs work in a similar manner, except for the potential difference of using Classes in the Contractor version in a predetermined way. Your learning curve will be about the same for each, the exception being that Contractor users have readier access to more job-related reports through the Contractor Reports menu. While similar information is available in Pro, you'll have to understand the program better to get at it. There is no difference in the time required to enter data or generate reports; users deciding to upgrade won't notice any visible change, so no additional training will be required.
There is probably a greater incentive for non-QuickBooks users to begin with the Contractor edition. Benefits to established users will come primarily from the more powerful functions available from the Premier version and possibly from ready access to reports that they may not have already discovered on their own.
This article has been provided by www.jlconline.com. JLC-Online is produced by the editors and publishers of The Journal of Light Construction, a monthly magazine serving residential and light-commercial builders, remodelers, designers, and other trade professionals.
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Conclusion:
QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus version is the Desktop Pro software that you pay for annually and includes ongoing upgrades, daily backups, and 24/7 customer support. Unlike the Desktop versions, there are unlimited upgrades as the new versions of QuickBooks Desktop are released. However, because you pay a recurring fee for this version, once you stop paying for the software you are no longer able to access your books.
New QuickBooks Features: QuickBooks Desktop software now lets you see invoices, billing dates, and other scheduled tasks in an integrated calendar view. They have also added the Document Centerwhich will let you scan and attach receipts, estimates, and other documents to invoices and customer files. Another addition is the Lead Centerthat allows you to manage valuable business leads and, once they become a customer, transfer them easily into the Customer Center with a single click. Also with this new release, all Desktop software comes with Industry-specific report templates created by other QuickBooks users that you can populate with your own financial data in one click of the mouse. Keeping your exported reports in Excel up-to-date has been made easier as well. By connecting these files with your QuickBooks software, all you have to do is refresh the Excel file and your reports are automatically updated every time you need it. A few more additions to the QuickBooks software are covered in our detailed review.
Ease of Use
Desktop Pro Plus received 5 stars for Ease of Use.
Setting Up Your Books: QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus is very easy to set up because it includes an initial setup guide, interface guidance tools, such as a searchable help database and question and answer forum, and unlimited, 24/7 U.S.-based customer support. However, the only way to access Pro Plus is by either downloading the software from the QuickBooks website or installing it off of a CD, which is more time-consuming compared to the Online versions that don’t require the installation of any software. With this Desktop software, you can import your financial and accounting data from Quicken, Peachtree, and Microsoft Office Accounting. Pro Plus also can import customer information and other contact data easily from any QuickBooks for Windows software, Excel, Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail.
Day-to-Day Operations: QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus is easy to use along with your daily business activities. Unlike the strictly-Desktop versions, Pro Plus includes online access that gives users access to essential QuickBooks customer and transaction data online from any computer with Internet access. However, unlike the Online versions, Premier Plus does not give you complete access to your books online which would be necessary if you are outsourcing your bookkeeping duties. This version also allows you to import your bank and credit card transactions into QuickBooks, which is incredibly important because it dramatically reduces the time required to record and categorize these expenses and deposits. Pro Plus’s interface is easy to navigate, as flow charts are categorized into your Vendors, Customers, and Employees. There are arrows representing a general flow of money and time, which give a quick visualization of the state of your business. The interface provides “nodes” that act as quick links to different parts of the software, such as invoices, time entry, estimates, statements, bills, sales orders, and more.
This version of QuickBooks backs up your bookkeeping data every day so that if you lose the local copy your files will be saved on QuickBooks’ remote servers. Typically, QuickBooks comes out with a new Desktop version every year and to get these added features you have to buy a whole new software package. A major advantage the Desktop “Plus” versions have over the strictly-Desktop versions is that upgrades are included with your monthly subscription.
Managerial Features: Customer Invoices, Estimates & Budgeting
The Desktop Pro Plus software has an extensive set of Managerial Features that are essential for a growing business.QuickBooks can create invoices for whatever business you operate, including traditional retailers that need to include sales tax, contractors providing a service that invoice customers based on time and expenses, and anything in between. You can easily create invoices by entering your customer’s name, the products or services you’re invoicing, sales tax, and a personalized message all on one page. Desktop Pro Plus also allows you to schedule invoices to be sent out automatically and periodically. With this software, you can print and email invoices directly from the interface. This version also allows you to track sales by the quantity of items sold or the total revenue generated by sales of a particular item. Through the software, you can also create an estimate for a customer for work that is going to be done in the future.
Unlike any of the Online versions, Desktop Pro Plus lets you create batch invoices so that you can invoice multiple customers who share regularly scheduled expenses all at once. In addition, this version will give you the ability to track international sales and expenses in multiple currencies. Pro Plus also allows you to create a budget and compare actual income and expense activity with budget projections.
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QuickBooks provides an add-on to manage your payroll for an unlimited number of employees for an additional $279.96 per year or $28 per month when paired with the purchase of either QuickBooks Pro Plus or Premier Plus. There are also various other payroll services that can integrate with QuickBooks software. You can accept credit and debit cards through QuickBooks if you apply for a Merchant Account through Intuit Payment Solutions. Your first two months are free, after which a $19.95 monthly fee is charged.
Reporting
QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus provides an extensive collection of more than 100 types of financial, sales, and tax reports. These include accounts receivable aging, profit versus loss, and reconciliation reports. Like the Online Essentials and Online Plus software, Pro Plus includes a Company Snapshot that summarizes profit, expenses, revenue, transactions, previous period information, outstanding bills, outstanding money owed, etc. With any of the QuickBooks software you can create custom reports by adding to or editing the report templates.
Quickbooks Pro Vs Pro Plus 2016 Review
Pro Plus also includes inventory reports to help you better plan future purchases, which is not built in to any of the QuickBooks Online versions. In addition, this version gives you access to a Customer Snapshot that allows you to view your customers’ purchase history, average days to pay, and outstanding balances at a glance.
Tracking Payments to Vendors & Inventory
Quickbooks Pro Or Pro Plus
QuickBooks allows you to set up a vendor list where you can easily enter in bills as you receive them and create vendors as you go. In addition, this version gives you the ability to view and pay all current bills. You can set up a schedule to automatically pay bills as they come in or delay bill payment to a different time than when you record them. You can also create customized purchase orders by vendor, itemized goods, and services, as well as add notes and view purchase history. If you use contractors, you will need to send them a 1099 tax form, which you can do with this QuickBooks version.
Unlike the QuickBooks Online versions, Pro Plus includes an inventory management system. This software allows you to designate levels of inventory that will alert you to reorder each product. With the QuickBooks Desktop software you can now batch invoice multiple vendor and employee time sheets for those who share the same work hours. Asus windows 10 drivers free. In addition to this, the new software lets you run automatically recurring transactions like bills and invoices, and customize the schedule to fit your needs.
Online Banking
QuickBooks provides bank account reconciliation, which means they go through every transaction in your bank account and make sure the information you have in your software matches. The software also allows you to print checks by letting you fill out the onscreen withdrawal form and select Print. QuickBooks offers in-depth deposit records that provide details, such as who made a deposit, which account a deposit went to, and the payment method used. The software allows you to view histories of credit card expenses, check expenses and cash expenses across all your accounts, as well as view each of these expenses by transaction.
Pricing and Support
Quickbooks Pro Vs Pro Plus 2016 Product
QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus normally costs $299.95 per year but is currently available for $199.95 for the first year and includes a 60-day money-back guarantee. Free product upgrades are available with the Desktop Pro Plus version.
Intuit Quickbooks Pro Plus 2016
Desktop Pro Plus does not charge an extra fee for access to their 24/7 U.S.-based phone and email customer support, like the strictly Desktop versions do. QuickBooks does not currently provide live chat technical support for Desktop Pro Plus, but they do offer sales live chat support. QuickBooks’ searchable FAQ section is helpful, as it provides a list of relevant topics when a user enters a query. Intuit also provides many user forum categories such as QuickBooks Tasks, Intuit Products, Intuit Resources, Intuit Payroll, and more, which we found very helpful.