Estimates in Quickbooks for Work Orders | North Carolina Common Interest Communities

April 1, 2013 - PRLog -- In QuickBooks for North Carolina Property Managers who are managing rental properties or homeowners associations, there is not a specific module included that is designated for QuickBooks. Yes you can go out and purchase add-ons that will perform the functions you are wanting, but if there is a better opportunity to use the program, why not just learn how to tailor it to your needs. In the meantime until Intuit adds this functionality in, you can use the estimates function for creating and tracking work orders.

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First, under the preference menu go to "Jobs and Estimates" and select the Company Preferences. You will want to make sure that you have selected "Yes" for do you use estimates, which will give you this functionality on your QuickBooks Homepage. Select Estimates from the homepage and fill out all the pertinent information similar to how you would an invoice. From here you can perform one of two tasks to create your work order instructions, first you can use the "Description Area" to type of the specific work needed, or you can modify the template to include a larger message area where you will be able to type out the instructions needed for the work order. For the second option we will post a how-to on this in tomorrows post.

Once the information is entered you can hit save and close, or print the item for use. To track which work orders are open there is a specific report that will provide this information. Go to the report center and type Estimates in the search box, from here different reports will provide the appropriate information. "Open Estimates List" will provide the current list of active items that still need work or need closing. To close the item, pull up that specific "Estimate / Work Order" and make the item inactive.

This is a round about way to make this program work, however perhaps in one of the next updates QuickBooks will take serious consideration into implementing a work order module included inside their software. It is one of the very few missing pieces that is desperately needed.