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Accounting Considerations

Accounting Global Parameters

These settings allow you to tailor the application to your locale.  Settings include: Measurement Unit, and Tax Code.  Modifying the Tax Code will change the values you see when viewing Accounting Rates.

Taxes

SI5 provides a wide variety of tax estimation methods.  The recommended method will depend on the tax rules imposed on your client.  For most organizations, tax on goods (Sales Tax) and services (Labor Sales Tax) will be sufficient.  If more complex tax calculations are required, consider using the Canadian Tax Code. 

Tax rates and other global settings may be customized for each Project (see D-Tools->Options).

More details on Taxes.

Contract Percentages - Progress Billing

If your business uses progressive billing, Contract Percentages is where the billing percentages are managed.  You should set these percentages and descriptions to the values that are most often used by your organization.  Each new Project will initially have these values.  You are able to modify the percentages and descriptions on a project by project basis.  These percentages are used to calculate the installed price for each description.  This information is shown on the Contract report providing the client a detailed payment schedule with signature page.

 

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For information on setting the default values in the Setup tab see Contract Percentages.

For information on changing this on a per project bases see Payment Schedule.

Misc. Parts %

This percentage can be used for any purpose you choose.  However it is most often used to account for the cost of consumable Products.  If you choose to use this percentage for some other purpose, such as to estimate freight charges, you will need to modify the client report label to match your intended use.  The Misc. Parts % is applied to all non-Labor Products and is taxed as equipment.

Equipment +/- %

This percentage operates just like the Misc Parts %.  It is used to provide a percentage adjustment for all non-Labor Products and is taxed as equipment. This value can be negative in order to give a discount.

The Misc. Parts % and Equipment +/- % factors are used as part of the Installed Price calculation and are subject to the same Sales tax as other non-labor Products.  Both of these will show up as separate line items in the project summary section of client reports.

See here for information on how to set these percentages for an entire project or here for how you can set them on a per Phase basis.

Inventory

Inventory is not managed directly by SI5.  However, QuickLinks (an optional SI5 module) can create Purchase Orders, Estimates and Invoices which may be processed by QuickBooks.  These accounting procedures can make adjustments to physical inventory within QuickBooks. See QuickLinks for more information.

Purchasing

SI5 has a set of reports that may be used to generate Purchase Orders for an individual Project.  Purchase orders may be generated in one of the three following ways

1)  A Purchase Order Report is run from with SI5.  This report is faxed to your vendor(s) or used to reenter the Purchase Order(s) by hand in your accounting system.

2)  OrderTools is a built-in Purchase Order system in SI5.  It has no links to any accounting software and the POs are created on a per Project basis. For more information see OrderTools.

3)  Products across multiple projects may be automatically transferred to purchase orders for supported accounting systems, reducing data entry time and errors.  This requires QuickLinks, an optional license.

Time Tracking

Time tracking is extremely important for both job costing and labor forecasting.  Time should be recorded in the accounting system to provide accurate job cost information.  If you are using the “labor per product” method of estimating labor, then you also need to use the SI5 Scheduling system to record actual time required to complete the Task.  It is not necessary to track time for each individual product.  SI5 will allow you to distribute time across multiple Products in proportion to the original estimate.  If these time tracking procedures are consistently used, labor forecasting will become more accurate over time.

Accounting ID mask 

The accounting ID mask defines the way QuickLinks names and groups SI5 items in your accounting software.  The mask is of the form:

MMMMMMMM OOOOOOOOOOOOO, where the number of “M”s represented the first number of characters of the Manufacturer name.  The “O”s represent the first number of characters of the Model number.  It is recommended that a non-colon separator such as a space “ “ be used between the Ms and Os.  If a colon “:” is used as the separator character, all model#s will show up as a sub-item of the Manufacturer in QuickLinks.  While this provides a nice hierarchical view of the items in QuickBooks, it is very restrictive.  In some accounting systems such as QuickBooks, all sub-items must be of the same type (Inventory or Non-Inventory) as the parent item.  If you ever wish to mix Inventory and Non-Inventory parts within a vendor, use ANY separator other than a “:”, such as a space. The non-colon separator provides the most flexibility for item assignment.  However, if you intend to code all Products as Inventory Parts, then the “:” as a separator is an option.  To use this mask, enter thirty "M"s, a colon, then thirty "O"s: MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM:OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

For more details see QuickLinks.

 

 

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