It uses a workflow design with icons for accessing common vendor, employee and customer tasks, such as entering purchase orders and employee time, paying bills, and receiving payments.
The program opens to a customizable home screen that serves as the primary interface. These templates are automatically applied during the initial setup process, which is guided by a wizard function. Also of note with the industry-specific versions of Premier is that the program uses terminology more appropriate for those sectors, such as job costing, subcontractors and suppliers in the Contractor Edition. QuickBooks revolutionized small business accounting, specifically due to its interfaces, which have evolved significantly over the years, but have always been focused on providing streamlined access to program functions for non-accountant users. Likewise, the program can support any number of client businesses.
(Current discounts apply that could bring the price down significantly.) Each of the QuickBooks Premier industry-focused editions (Professional Accountant, Contractor, Professional Services, Manufacturing, Retail, General Business and Nonprofit) are included with all of the other editions, which can be useful for entrepreneurs running different types of entities. Suggested retail price for QuickBooks Premier 2009 Contractor Edition is $399.95 for a single user, $749.95 for two users, and $1,099.95 for the three-user edition, which can support up to a total of five concurrent users. Recent new additions to QuickBooks are also available in the Contractor Edition, including the new Client Data Review tool, which helps with write-up and troubleshooting functions.
The Contractor Edition adds additional functions for tracking jobs and change orders, managing subcontractors, billing by phase, estimating, job costing and profitability analyses. All versions of Premier include the same core module set, providing integrated GL, AR, AP, contact management, inventory and a variety of options for payroll.
The QuickBooks Premier line of small business accounting programs from Intuit includes several industry-specific versions, including the Contractor Edition, which offers features specifically geared toward builders. From the July 2010 Review of Construction/Contractor Accounting Systems