Customer Case Study: September Electric
September Electric Powers Up with QuickBooks Contractor Edition
Kelly Dwyer's life is action-packed. She manages a household, two children and the family-owned business, September Electric. "Sometimes I need software to think for me," she says. "I need things to be simple. The simpler, the better."
Simplicity was the main reason behind Dwyer's decision to use QuickBooks Premier: Contractor Edition for her business. Already a longtime QuickBooks user, Dwyer has steadily expanded her knowledge over the past nine years. Initiated into QuickBooks in 1993, she upgraded to QuickBooks Pro soon after and has recently moved to the more specialized QuickBooks Contractor Edition.
 Dwyer has found the Contractor Edition to be an excellent fit for her electrical contracting company, which she runs with her husband, Matthew. The San Rafael, CA-based business handles residential and commercial projects and employs five electricians. Dwyer adds that employee numbers can grow to as many as 20, depending on the season and number of electrical contracts.
Within weeks of installing QB Contractor at September Electric, Dwyer discovered a host of useful features that have streamlined her accounting responsibilities. She says the many comprehensive reports are a boon for her record keeping. "In construction, clients do everything possible not to pay their invoices. With QuickBooks Contractor Edition it's easy to provide customer details for every amount on the invoice."
Dwyer is also pleased with the new change order features that help her track updates and new customer requests for a project. "Now I can set up the job hierarchy and easily see the job summaries and how much the change orders have increased the invoice."
Keeping track of changes that occur on the site is a constant challenge for contractors, says Dwyer. "There's a huge communication gap between the field office and the internal employees. We are constantly working with the contractors to better understand what they are doing at the sites and to improve our communication."
Streamlining the Business
Over the next few months, Dwyer plans to take advantage of other QuickBooks features that will help the business become more proficient. By using some of the new features of QuickBooks Contractor, Dwyer can also see which jobs are making money — and which are not. By the end of March, she will add purchase orders into her business processes to ensure that the prices vendors quote align with their invoices.
Sometimes a vendor will give us a quote for the contractor price, explains Dwyer, but when we receive the invoice it lists a more expensive retail price. "Purchase orders will help us maintain and lower our costs." After September Electric implements purchase orders, Dwyer intends to add inventory features in June.
"In the past, these steps seemed like too much paperwork," says Dwyer. "But the economic slowdown has led us to review our procedures and implement practices that will make us more aware of our numbers."
QuickBooks Contractor Edition has also prodded Dwyer to consider alternative ways to communicate with her customers and vendors. Right now September Electric faxes invoices and then follows-up by mailing another invoice. By the end of the summer, Dwyer expects that she will e-mail invoices her customers with Internet access.
Another project on Dwyer's horizon is finishing September Electric's business plan. She plans to utilize the Business Plan feature available in all QuickBooks Premier products. Even though she and her husband have a shared verbal understanding of their company, Dwyer wants a business plan that demonstrates in concrete terms what they have built, as well as forecasts where the business will be in five years.
Dwyer had purchased business plan software but never finished the intricate project. Moving the data from QuickBooks to the business plan software was too tedious. "With the other software, I couldn't take our financial data from QuickBooks and enter it automatically into the business plan," she explains. "Now I can easily add our five-year sales history and create multiple forecasts."
From developing a business plan to adding new communication channels, QuickBooks Contractor Edition has made Dwyer's accounting tasks more manageable. "QuickBooks for Contractors is amazing. One of the great things about this software is it pushes us to consider different ways of doing business."
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