We are trying to assess wether or not Quickbooks for Contractors would be a good solution for an interior design company. I am interested in knowing if someone the industry has been using this software and what are their recommendations and/or opinions.

We are an architectural firm using QB Pro 2002. It certainly does not have the "power" of other, larger accounting software packages (i.e. MAS90) but, overall, gets the job done (for a smaller firm). We utilize the Estimates and phase billing frequently especially given the fact that most of our projects are fixed fees.

The one negative in our line of business is the Reimbursables function. We usually have a limit on reimbursables in all our contracts. I post our reimbursables (i.e. mileage, blueprints, etc) as vendor bills and then assign that expense to a customer/job which will then appear when you do invoicing (under time/cost tab) but it appears that you can not set a "Limit" and have those same reimbursables apply against that limit. Therefore, I have to manually keep track of the reimbursables.

There are a few down sides but overall a good product for small firms.

We are an architectural and interior design firm. We have been using QuickBooks for a number of years. It works well for the nuts and bolts of our business. However, we are currently using a separate software program for our interior design purchasing function. I have just contacted QuickBooks and the purchasing software company via email to see if there is a way to integrate the two.

I will let you know what happens.

Are you currently using another accounting software package? Does it include purchasing components?