A deposit is an amount of money that the customer pays to the contractor before the job is started. The contractor holds some or all of the deposit until the job is completed.

Deposits help by the contractor should be recorded in QuickBooks in an "Other Current Liability" type account, because deposits are not earned income until they are applied to what the customer owes as work is completed.

You enter the amount of the deposit in the prompt for Deposit Amount in the Estimate tab panel of the the Edit Job form.

Smart Contractor allows you to "apply" some, or all, of the customer's deposit to the customer's invoices as the job progresses. This means that you can use some, or all, of the deposit amount to "pay for" part, or all, of an invoice. Smart Contractor provides complete flexibility in how you apply deposits to invoices, and keeps track of the balance of your customer's deposit.

If you are using QuickBooks Integration, Smart Contractor automatically writes transactions to QuickBooks to manage deposits in QuickBooks. When you enter a deposit for a job, Smart Contractor automatically writes a "Sales Receipt" transaction in QuickBooks for the amount of the deposit. The "Sales Receipt" transaction has one line for the QuickBooks Item named "Deposit". The deposit amount gets posted to the GL account you have set for the "Deposit" item in QuickBooks.

Entering Deposits In QuickBooks

You can enter deposits into QuickBooks (for example if you want to use QuickBooks to process a credit card payment). Smart Contractor will retrieve deposits that you enter into QuickBooks, but only under these conditions:

• You must first enter the job in Smart Contractor, and have it copied to QuickBooks: set the job status to "Contract Signed", or "Job Started", and check the option to have the job created in QuickBooks. If you are using real time QuickBooks updating, the job will be created in QuickBooks when you click OK. If you are using batch updating, you must run the Update QuickBooks Data utility. See the QuickBooks Integration topic for more information.
• When you enter the deposit in QuickBooks, it must be entered as a Sales Receipt transaction.
• The QuickBooks sales receipt transaction must have just one line item in it, and that line item must be for the QuickBooks item called "Deposit".
• The date of the QuickBooks sales receipt transaction must be within the range of dates defined by the "Get QB Payments Up To: ___ Days Old:" prompt in the Setup QuickBooks Integration form.

When all of these conditions are met, Smart Contractor will retrieve deposit payment receipts from QuickBooks.

Applying Deposits To Invoices

When you apply part (or all) of the deposit balance to an invoice the Invoice entry form in Smart Contractor, the program writes an additional line in the invoice in QuickBooks for a minus amount for the "Deposit" item. The minus amount subtracts from the invoice total, and subtracts from the balance of the Deposit account in QuickBooks. This is how Smart Contractor automatically applies deposits on account to customer invoices.

See the QuickBooks Integration topic for more information on integrating with QuickBooks.

See the Invoice entry form for information on entering invoices and applying deposits to invoices.