Customer jobs

Hello again Najah,

It's great to hear that you're attempting to make better use of your QuickBooks file. QuickBooks Desktop has tons of great features and tools that can make doing your books a much simpler and more streamlined process. I'd like to give you some more information on job costing to help you decide if it'll be beneficial for your line of work.

QuickBooks Desktop's job costing tool enables you to track the expenses for a specific job and compare those against the income. You'll be able to see how much money you earn, and how much you spend for each job. You could set up an individual job for each student per grade. If there are particular scenarios like class trips that you would want to specifically track expenses and revenue for, this tool could also be an asset to you.

Tracking job costs in QuickBooks Desktop is a really comprehensive article that gives you all the steps to set up the feature and explains how it works. I highly recommend checking it out. 

If you have an accountant that you work with, they would also be a great resource on this topic. They could help you decide if setting up jobs is the best way to do your books or if they have any other recommendations for features in QuickBooks that could help you out. If you don't have an accountant yet, we have a database of QuickBooks-savvy accountants. Find an accountant here.

I encourage other members of our QuickBooks family chime in with feedback for you! Have a great week!

That's an interesting use of Desktop QuickBooks. You're trying to round up a lot of info and organize it for future reference and see how students flow through the school.  Taking a step back and thinking about the bigger picture is necessary.  This is how I would consider setting this up with the info you've given:

1.  For each Family, I would create a customer using the naming convention Last Name, First Name:

ex  "Smith, Joan & Robert"

      "Talbot, Joan & Smith Robert"  (if the guardians have different last names)

Last name first will make it easier to search (visually) as the number of families in the customer list increases.

2.  In the Customer Centre, right click the customer name and look for "Add Job"

Each "Job" you create will represent each child they have in the school.

ex  "Talbot, James", "Smith, Cindy", "Smith-Talbot, David"

By doing this, each child is now associate with a parent and their sibling's

3.  Now create an item for each grade at your school

     "Grade JK"

     "Grade SK"

     "Grade 01"

     "Grade 02"

     "Grade 03"

      etc...

      (Be mindful of the type of item and the g/l account for billing purposes)

4.  For each Grade item above, create sub items for each type of thing you wish to track:

     "Grade JK"

                 Lunch Plan

                 School trip

                 Uniform

     "Grade SK"

                 Lunch Plan

                 School trip

                 Uniform

     "Grade 01"

                 Lunch Plan

                 School trip

                 Uniform

                 Music Instrument Rental

     etc...

The name of these items can be changed.  You can also add more as needed, just right click on an item, duplicate it, rename it, and it will automatically list under the same grade.  If you want to use an item on another Grade, duplicate it and change the "Subitem of"  to the desired Grade. 

Each Subitem can have Subitems, too if desired.

As you create more and more "Customers" (Parents/Gaudians), and add "Jobs" (Children), and start invoicing by sub items, you will be able to run item reports by time period, by grade, by student, by family, groups of subitems, etc.  Obviously, you'll be starting this style of tracking mid cycle for some families and will not have a complete history.  However, you will have something very versatile that can be expanded on for many years and will be a great reference tool for future planning.