QuickBooks Tip: Class Tracking

To track income and expenses by any significant segment of your business, use the class tracking feature in QuickBooks. You can use class tracking for non-profits to track grants and restricted and unrestricted funds. You can also use class tracking to tracking multiple locations or divisions of a company. If you are doing business with the government, you could use class tracking to track fixed priced jobs vs. cost plus jobs, vs. overhead.

To turn on class tracking:

• Go to the Edit menu and click on preferences, then Accounting preference.
• Click on the company preference tab, the select the Use Class Tracking box.
• Click OK

If you are using QuickBooks payroll, you can assign a class code to each employee. If it is important to assign employee time to multiple classes, you will need to change a preference:

• Go to the Edit menu and click on preferences, then Payroll & Employees preference.
• Click on the company preference tab, then select the Job Costing and Class Tracking for Payroll Expenses and Assign One Class per Earnings Item
• Click OK

This will allow you to enter a class code for each item on an employee's paycheck. If you are using the QuickBooks time tracking feature (Edit, Preferences, Time & Expenses, then click on Yes to "Do you track time?"), you can further break down time by job and class code.

Once your preferences are in place, create the class codes you want to track (go to the List menu, click on Class List, click on Class at the bottom, and New, then enter a name for the class and click on next or OK). To properly use the class codes, be sure to enter the appropriate class code on every invoice, sales receipt, deposit, bill, check, journal entry, etc. that you create.

To create a report, Go to the Reports menu, then Company & Financial, then Profit and Loss by Class. Select the dates you want to include. If a column appears on the report called "Unclassified," these are income or expenses that have not been assigned a class code. Double click on the item and assign the appropriate code to have that income or expense appear in the correct column.

Note: You can also create a budget by class, if desired.