Skip the details and download the job log here...
Do you bill by the hour? How do you know how much you worked and spent on materials?
Do you charge a fixed price for a job? How do you know if you are making or losing money?
If you are a real estate professional, can you prove that you spent more than 750 hours and more than one-half of your professional hours in the real estate trade? (Necessary to avoid the passive-loss limitation of $25,000).
If you are audited, can you back up your deductions?
Even if you use Quickbooks religiously, which I do, a detailed job log can be invaluable. This is a copy of the log I use to track billable time and materials. It is a Mac Numbers file, but you can open and save in Excel.
Notes on how to use:
- Start on the Hours tab. Make an entry for each time you work on a job or project. Work on the same job at the same location will get matching Location and Project names. A new project at the same location gets a new Project name. Use the Initials field when you have multiple employees.
- On the Materials tab, use the same Location and Project names to track expenses.
- On the Summary tab, make one entry for each unique Location and Project.
- Once you have invoiced the job, put a Yes in the Invoiced column for the job on the Hours and Materials tab and the amount invoiced on the Summary tab.
- Insert rows above the bottom row on the Summary tab. When you do, make sure the Totals fields are correctly summing up all the Hours, Materials, and Invoiced values.