Contract / P&L management tool sought - simple is best

[Bo]

For background - We are a consulting firm that provides financial management
services to government and nonprofit organizations.

We are seeking a tool that will allow us to better manage our contracts and
company P&L. I am looking for Buget, Actual, Projection capability.

We record our hours - billable and non billable - via www.getmytime.com

Most of our contracts are Time and Material

Elements include
Labor Category Title
Labor Category Rate per Hour
Hours per Labor Category

Input
Hours are tracked via Get My Time

Output desired
Profit and Loss by
Budget, Actual, Projection
Monthly, YTD, Balance of Year
Rolling Estimate (Current Projection)
Actual vs. Budget
Projection vs. Budget
By Contract
By Labor Category
By Dollars

Outcome sought
Sound Fact Based Contract Management

We use QuickBooks for our Financials but may not want to do all of this in
there as it may "muddy the waters"

Let me know - thank you in advance.

 

[JLatham]

Use Quickbooks to set up accounts for various expenses, putting them into
categories such as G&A, Overhead, full time employee fringe benefit costs,
part time fringe benefit costs, etc and any others that a CPA may advise
about.
Use those values to determine what percent of your income they eat up and
then continue to to use them to develop your bill rates for labor. They can
serve as the basis for budgeting and for projecting future costs.
Contact a good CPA for advice on what expenses to include in which category.

Trust me, your accounting software (Quickbooks) is going to be the best way
to track those expenses while Excel can be used to analyze the data and set
up projections and budgets.

 

[Bo]

Thanks for the response.

We do have QB all set up and have been using it for years. We have recorded
our "history". We have not used it for budgeting, planning etc.

Would you recommend budgeting and panning within QB - jobs etc... or within
Excel? If within Excel -is there a COTS product that can integrate Time
Keeping at the front end and QB at the back end?