Masonry Magazine May 2003 Page. 42
Accounting
Within the material cost account, the types of material (quantities and dollars) being purchased should be tracked. Within the equipment rental cost account, the types of equipment being rented should be tracked.
Tracking job cost by phase is also nice for those jobs that have distinct and separate phases running totally separate crews. While you may be making money on Phase One, you may be losing money on Phase Two. Everything mixed into the same job distorts the picture.
Like the general ledger, the job cost module captures transactions from the various other modules within the accounting system. Whether it's an AP invoice or a PR transaction, the job cost system needs to capture all detail! Purging AP, PR and the other accounting modules should have no effect on the level of detail still available in job cost.
You should also have the ability to archive job cost detail by job. This facilitates the restoring of all transactions for a job and the re-running of job cost reports for that day down the road when a warranty problem, or such, surfaces. Check out the available reports within the job cost module to make sure they report the data in a format that is useful to management. Look for reports that show production, budgeted dollars, costs, projected costs, budgeted quantities, quantities installed, quantities purchased, and so forth.
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Once the core modules are up and running smoothly, you may want to consider taking a step further by interfacing AP with other software modules such as Purchasing (recommended), Inventory, Equipment and Subcontracts. Another essential module to look for would be one to track all of your time and material billings and other items priced during the course of the job for which you need to pursue those all elusive change orders.
In closing, you will not find a system that addresses everything mentioned within this article but by being informed, you should be able to ask the right questions, weed out those software packages that just won't work for our masonry industry and set your software vendor on the path to finding you the solutions that you require.
Michael Ridgway is Chief Executive Officer of Smart Products & Services, a company specializing in accounting software and accounting services for the masonry industry. He began his computer programming career some 20 years ago and has worked solely within the masonry industry for the last 18 years. He can be reached via e-mail at: mike@SmartProductsAndServices.com.
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