Naming when using QuickBooks

If you want transparency in your records, it's important to name every transaction and cross reference purchases of products that can be matched to jobs to cost of goods sold and expenses

Where appropriate naming the purchase to cross reference to the customer provides proof that your costs relate to jobs for which you've billed customers.  There's nothing worse than someone wanting me to do their books and none of the job costs are cross referenced to customers. 

Why would I say that?  Well just maybe they didn't record all of their revenue and they don't want anyone looking too closely.  I once had a client (former immediately, I will add) who informed me that they didn't bill out for jobs on certain days of the weeks, at least not on the books, so if they recorded the cost of those jobs and cross referenced to the customer, those customers wouldn't be on the books.

Another reason you want to match costs with sales is to check that you have billed out all of your costs to clients. I don't know how many times I've found customers don't bill out for all of their work.  It's no wonder they don't make a profit.

Then there's costs that are accumulated in advance of billing and when there's a cut-off period, and those costs don't match to revenue, they must be adjusted out as costs for future matching.  In other words, you don't get to claim those costs until you bill those customers.

The reverse works too, if you bill out in advance, and that revenue is not yet earned.