From the course: QuickBooks Pro 2020 Essential Training

Create estimates - QuickBooks Pro Tutorial

From the course: QuickBooks Pro 2020 Essential Training

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Create estimates

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- [Instructor] One of my residential clients would love to know how much we would charge to do their tasting party. In QuickBooks, you can create estimates and either print them out and mail them or email them directly to your customers. To create an estimate from the home screen, click estimates. Click the dropdown next to customer job. We're going to choose the customer, in this case, Cally Reynolds. You'll notice that her address gets populated on the right hand side. You can change and manually override that, if you want. You can also change the estimate number. Since this is our first estimate, it's estimate number one, but that might tell Cally that we're a bit new to our business, so I'm going to go ahead and change that to a higher number. On the right hand side, I can see a summary of the customer, their email address and phone number, if they have one, any open balances they have, active estimates, and any recent transactions. I could also see notes that I have written about them that I might have written in the customer center. Now we're ready to start adding line items to our estimate. On the left hand side under item, click inside and then click the down triangle that appears. Here's where we can see all the items that we added in a previous video. I didn't need to click inside the field. I could also just start typing and it will auto populate if I know these items, so once you start cooking doing estimates and invoices, you'll be able to just start typing the first few letters and you won't have to use the mouse. The first thing I'm going to add is our tasting party. Once I click on the item, it gets listed in the middle. The description is automatically populated, but I can click inside and manually override any text that's in there. I can also click my mouse into the next field, but it's much easier to hit the tab key. This way, I can enter line items very quickly. I'll set the quantity to 12 people because that's how many people she's going to have for her tasting party and the charge is per person. I'll hit the tab key again. The rate is automatically populated from when we created our item. However, again, I can manually override the price also. The total amount is listed here. I could add a markup, if I wanted to. The markup won't show up on the estimate that I send to the client. It's just for me. For example, if the rate is the amount that I paid for the product, the markup is the amount that I'm going to add to the customer's cost and the total is the two combined. Since this is a service, it's non-taxable for me. I can hit the tab key to go to the next line and add some more items, so I'll go ahead and start adding some more. For each of these items, I could change the quantity and if there's no rate listed, I can type one in. Every time I hit the tab key, it automatically calculates the total. And since these are physical products, they're declared as being taxable in QuickBooks. If you decide that you don't need a particular product, you can delete it by right clicking inside of that line and choosing delete line. When you're done, from the dropdown at the bottom, you can choose the particular sales tax that they're liable for, and you'll notice that it first subtotals all their items, including the percentage for tax and gives you a total at the bottom. On the bottom left hand side in the customer message field, I can click the dropdown, I can see the built in QuickBooks messages along with the ones that we added in a previous video. Now that it's done, there's a few ways I can get the estimate to the customer. At the very top of the screen, I can click the down arrow next to print. I can print a preview of my estimate. In fact, if I click on it, I'll click ignore all on the spell check and then I can click inside the magnifying glass to make a larger version of this estimate to see how it's going to look. You'll note that there's no markup field here. I'll click the close button at the top of the screen. If I click back on print, I can print the estimate directly, an envelope containing their address, and I can also save it as a PDF file on my computer and work with it later. I can also click directly to email to the customer or if I have a check mark next to email later, I can send it out as a batch along with other transactions in QuickBooks. It's okay if I don't have the customer's email address in the customer center yet. I'll be prompted to enter it if it's not already there when I saved the estimate. Let's go ahead and save this by clicking save and close at the bottom. If you haven't already put in an email address for your company, you'll be prompted the first time you save it if you have email later selected. This is going to be for the return address where customers can get in touch with you when you send out their invoices. I'll click okay, ignore all on the spell check, and my estimate has been created. There's a few more things I want to show you. On the top right hand side of the screen, you'll notice that my reminders has increased by one. If I click on this, it's going to open up the remainder screen. Here, I can see that I have forms to send. This is my estimate because I said I'd email it later. I can double click on it and it's going to pop up with my estimate. I can see that it's going to send it out as a PDF file. Here's the subject line and I can go ahead and click inside and change the text, if I want. I can also click inside the body of the email and change it. For example, I can make it a little bit more personal. If I'm all ready to send, I can click the send now button. Any other transactions that I had ready to be sent will also appear in this view. If I don't want to send any of them, I can uncheck a particular one in this box. For now, I'll click close at the bottom of the screen. I'll click the x in the top right hand side to close out of this pane. If you ever need to access your estimates again to look for them for future reference, you can click back on estimates in the customer center. If it's an estimate that you made recently or within one or two, you can click the back button on the left hand side of the screen. It's going to pop up your previous estimate. You could also click on the arrow a few more times to see some previous estimates and find the one that you need. If it was a long time ago, however, it's much easier to click on the find button. It's right underneath the arrows. From here in the customer job section, I can choose Cally Reynolds. I'll select her name, click find, and it will pop up with her estimate. If Cally has any other estimates, I can look on the right hand side and see other recent transactions. I can click on any blue text to go directly to it. I'm all done with this, so I'll click the x on the top right hand side.

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