A service call and a 200-amp panel upgrade both end with an invoice from your shop. They don’t make money the same way. A service call is a truck roll, an hour or two of labor and a few parts. A panel upgrade ties up a crew for a day or more, needs a permit and an inspection, and carries a big material bill before the customer pays.
When both kinds of work land in one income line, your Profit and Loss shows one number. You see total sales. You don’t see which kind of work pays for the trucks.
What a cost code does for an electrical shop
A cost code is a label on every dollar coming in or going out, so your books sort by type of work. In QuickBooks Online the simplest version is a service item for each kind of job you sell: Service Call, Panel Upgrade, EV Charger Install, Generator Install, New Construction Rough-In. Pick the right item on each invoice and the income sorts itself.
Then handle the cost side. Tag the wire, breakers and permit fees on a panel job to that customer or project when you enter the bill or the receipt. Do the same with crew hours. Each job now carries its own costs, and the Profit and Loss by Customer report (or project profitability on QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced) shows what each job earned.
Why panel upgrades and service calls need separate tracking
Pricing. Service calls usually run on a trip charge plus hourly or flat-rate pricing. Panel upgrades run on a bid. Without a margin for each, you’re guessing whether to raise the trip charge or tighten the bid.
Cash timing. A panel upgrade means buying the panel, breakers and wire days or weeks before the final invoice. Service calls often pay the same day. Mixed together, a month with three upgrades looks like a bad month even when every job went well.
Where to put your crew. Once the numbers show which work earns more per crew hour, you know what to chase in the slow season and what to price higher in the busy one.
How to set it up in QuickBooks Online
- Go to Products and services, click New, then Service. Create one item for each type of work you sell.
- Point each item to an income account. One Sales account works fine, since the item does the sorting.
- Pick the right item on every estimate and invoice.
- Tag material bills, receipts and time entries to the customer or project.
- Each month, run the Sales by Product/Service Summary report to see income by type of work, then the Profit and Loss by Customer report to see what each job earned after costs.
This week’s QuickBooks Tip of the Week video walks through the first three steps and the sales report in under 40 seconds. Watch on TikTok at @sullivanbookkeeping.
Start with last quarter
You don’t need to rebuild the whole year. Set up the items, then go back through the last 90 days of invoices and recode them. Three months of clean data shows the pattern for most shops.
If your books are behind, a cleanup first makes the rest easier. Sullivan Bookkeeping Services handles monthly bookkeeping, job costing and catch-up work for electrical contractors around Prescott Valley, Prescott and the rest of Yavapai County. See how we work on our page about bookkeeping for electricians in Prescott Valley.
Want a second set of eyes on how your items are set up? Book a free 15-minute consultation and I’ll tell you the two or three things I’d fix first, whether you hire me or not.