Tips for tracking details in QuickBooks

Tactic

Situation

Examples

Classes

a subset of both income and expenses

locations, fund, department, business segment, employee, partners, product lines

Items

products and services

specific items and services

Jobs

multiple jobs for customers

customer locations

Expense tracking

expenses incurred for a specific customer

filing fees, special orders

Built-in fields

special customer and vendor info, already set up

email address, payment terms, sales tax status, sales rep, “ship to” addresses, tax ID numbers, account numbers, credit limits

Custom fields

special customer, item, employee and vendor info, not previously covered

item color, pager numbers, employee certifications, birthdays, program participation

Customer/Vendor types

grouping customers or vendors

residential vs. commercial, remodeling vs. new work, subcontractors vs. materials suppliers vs. overhead vendors

Subaccounts

grouping of accounts with subtotals

insurance, utilities, supplies, taxes

Subitems

grouping of items with subtotals

related items, product lines

Item Group

fast entry of a set of items

items frequently entered together, sets sold together and separately

Payroll Items

workers compensation classifications

carpentry, roofing, driving, etc.

Memo

consistent coding of detail it doesn’t make sense to track other ways, or when you’ve used up other ways

repair bills by piece of equipment, RMA numbers on bill payments

Name coding

distinguishing similar names, usually with a prefix or suffix

customer who is also a vendor, similar account names, internal designations