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Using Quickbooks and Work Order
Hey guys quick question from a new shop owner. Im just getting on my feet, reopening my father’s repair shop. Been open a couple weeks and I’m having trouble figuring out how I should use Quickbooks and repair orders.
Currently I use quickbooks for keeping track of invoices (still figuring it out) and printing receipts (still figuring this out also). However my current issue is I don’t have something like a repair order I can give to my mechanic to keep track of his time and what he did on a vehicle.Should I use work orders for my mechanic to keep track AND use it as a customer receipt? Then just use quickbooks to keep track of paid invoices? Or should I just use the work order to keep track of what my mechanic does, then stick with invoicing and receipts through Quickbooks.
Hope this question makes sense, thanks in advance for all the help.
Kyle
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3 Replies
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Kyle,
I would recommend you getting a management software to use for customer repair orders, tech work sheets, inventory, labor guides and on and on. I use Quick books but only to track gross sales & all expenses. Similar to a profit & loss report you would and should get from a account monthly.
Curt
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I second that. If you’re going to grow and run a legitimate business, you will need some management software. I love Shop-Ware personally and have used 11 others over the years. Happy to discuss pros-cons of each if you’re interested. Most integrate with QB in some way, most track employee flatrate to some degree. A few have timeclocks built in as well.
If you’re very, very small and tight on budget, you’ll still need some kind of estimator and database and I’d recommend giving Realtime Labor Guide a look. They have an advanced version that is reasonable and will track your basic stats, build quotes and maintain a customer database. You will however, be doing double entry to QB I believe.
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I’m sort of late to the party but I’ve been writing estimates and repair orders in QB for well over a decade. I don’t use any conventional shop management software other than QB & Google Calendar. To create a repair order in QB, you create a form template. Go to Lists>Templates. Double-click a template you want to redesign/create. I modified the invoice to be a repair order. I also redesigned the estimate to look like the RO, but it says “Estimate” instead of “Invoice”. I don’t use the word “Repair Order”. Take a look at my redesigned invoice:
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