Specific QBO Question – cost centers

Home Forums General Discussion Specific QBO Question – cost centers

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #11970
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hi All, any QBO experts out there?

    The client owns a distillery and a bar in the same building. He wants to run separate P&L’s for each side of the business. (the distillery and the bar). So the P&Ls with distillery expenses would include only the vendors that he uses for that side. And vice versa with the bar side. He gets a report from square that can be broken down by item and the items are different for each side (ie, what they sell). The only split vendors are utilities and rent. Even payroll is segregated except for occasional times. Other than a very labor intensive adventure of assigning a class to each and every income and expense and then running a P&L by class, i couldn’t see how he could do it. What i came up with is:

    Customize the P&L’s to include only vendors from whichever side and only items from whichever side (for the income). (Are P&L’s customizable like this? – can you choose to show income from only certain items?) Then export it to excel. Then multiply the rent and utilities lines by %50 or whatever the percentage is and come up with a new, adjusted, P&L. He would have to do this manually each month.

    Do you have a better idea for him? He keeps wanting QBO to have a way for him to have separate cost centers, one for the distillery and one for the bar. I can’t figure out how he can do it (other than by using classes) and get a nice clean P&L from QBO. But i might be missing something.

    Thank you so much for any ideas!

    #12674
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I am no QB expert but that sounds like a lot of work and extra steps to go thru. My initial thought would be to set up a separate QB acct. I would look to see if they have multiple acct set ups.

    #12675
    Meryl Schaffer
    Spectator

    Hi Jennifer.

    This is exactly what Classes are for, and they work really easily. If you are a QBO accountant user, you can even assign classes to batches of transactions, so you could get the history corrected pretty quickly. If that is your only hesitation for using classes, then I would do it.

    Another way would be to have two sets of Accounts (ie COGS – Distillery and COGS – BAR) and then customize and memorize a P&L for each one.

    You can customize your P&Ls by Vendor, but in my experience it is easy to miss one and then the numbers are off.

    I assume this is one business, and therefore I would not recommend having 2 different QBO accounts for tax purposes.

    I’m happy to answer any questions if you want to email me.

    Cari Dawson
    info@CarisCustomOrganizing.com

    #12676
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Thank you Kelly and Cari! This is very helpful indeed!! I will relay this to the client – I really appreciate your help. Cari – i might take you up on your offer for an email! Thanks again!
    JJ

    #12677
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Cari brings up a good point; whether or not this is two separate businesses or one. If it is two, I also recommend having two separate QB accounts. If it is one, classes work great!

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.