How do I do basic job tracking (payroll and materials) without making things complicated? It's asking for accounts to link things to and I don't want end up with an accounting nightmare!
The simplest way to do this is to post your labor times against customer:job when you make time entries for your team. If you want more detail you can also choose an item on the time sheet.
There are applications to help you gather this info from the field as well, including WorkTrack Time Card for Intuit Payroll. Disclaimer: I work for the company that makes this product.
As far as job costing for materials there are two ways that most of our customers do this. One is with invnetory parts. Since QuickBooks (some versions) tracks average cost on inventory, you will get a cost value against a job anytime you include an inventory part on an invoice against a job. The other way is with POs. When you write a PO for parts you will use on a job, be sure to select the customer:job and it will show up as a dollar amount on the job costing reports once you have paid the bill for the PO.
As far as the accounts go, I assume you are talking about the accounts on the items that you will use for costing. Try to keep this simple as assign accounts that already exist in QuickBooks.
