Markup using items

Contractor uses a generic non-inventory type, double sided item, called Materials - - pointing to income and cost of goods sold account.

Contractor does not create detailed Estimates in QuickBooks.

When purchasing materials for a job, he uses the item Materials, puts the description in the memo field and the customer name in that field.

This pulls the purchased materials (numerous lines from various purchases) into the invoice.

However, depending on the customer, the contractor will mark up the materials costs by a %. If he does this manually, the markup will flow to the income account correctly.

Question:

Is there any way to automate the markup on each item?

Solutions already tested are as follows:

Using the expenses tab and the preference to track reimbursable expenses as income with a markup account does not work for 2 reasons -

This only works if using the expense tab - items are needed because the account is a cogs account. . .and items are used for other reporting needs.

The markup % varies with customer:job.

Price levels do not work because the item used does not have a defined cost/standard price/custom price.

Billing rates do not work because the item is not a service item and it does not have a standard rate.

Any ideas?

My motto:
Keep it as simple as you can. . .with only as much detail as you need.

When in doubt, make a backup first!!

*****
Laura Dion
Cents-able Bookkeeping, LLC

www.centsablebookkeeping.com

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3 Replies

Rustler

Allstar

08/16/10 11:17am PDT

As QB stands now there is no way to do what you want.

One work around though might be to create an other charge item called Clean-up & Disposal Charge or something, set it to the mark up rate, use a sub-total after the reimbursed materials and then this item.

If I've helped, mark it solved.

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qbteachmt

Allstar, Accountant Community AllStar

08/16/10 4:00pm PDT

When selecting the items using Add time & Costs, there is a box to checkmark that these items should be put onto the invoice using Reimbursable Group. This allows the on screen view to differ from the printout view, as with any Group item. This will show the customer one entry for Materials. But for the on screen view, before the group's final line that is the total for the group "Time and materials," you can enter two lines (click on the final line that shows the group total, use Ctl+insert key twice to insert two blank lines within the group but at the bottom). Now use a Subtotal Item and tab around to the next line, and use the Markup item.

The customer will see one entry for "Time and materials" but the contractor will have been able to markup this invoice specifically for this customer and this sale.

You can type over the "Time and materials" on the invoice if you need different text in the description.

You can select only certain entries from the Add Time & Costs view, subtotal and markup this first Reimb Group, then select the rest and leave them without a markup.

There is a lot of control using the Reimb Group function that comes with the checkmarked box. This differs from the typical Group item in that you don't build the list of items in this group using the Item list edit function. It is a "dynamic" group item.

The description is set by the Item edit function.

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LauraD

Allstar, Accountant Community AllStar

08/19/10 7:01am PDT