QuickBooks Online Projects and Budgets: Step by Step Beginner Guide to Working with 

Open up the transactions and then there will be a tiny check box on the left that says "track returns for customers". Once you check that box you will see the customer/project field to select from a drop down your project then save.

it kind be done but it's also tedious process if there were reconciliations or QB payments associated. You can also attempt to go to the invoice and switch the customer to the project in the drop down menu and see if it will go. Often times it means removing the payment temporarily then relinking the payment applied.

You can span 2 year budget. First you have to make sure your annual budget begins with the year 1. Then you can run the budget by project (customer) for all dates which will continue to tack actuals vs budget.

@@SteveChase1 Thank you so much for the quick response. My project budget is running from 7/22-8/23. I've entered all the 2022 budget items, but I can't scroll forward to access the 2023 calendar.

@@lauriSelib oh I see. When you input your budget you have to enter the totals for both years and make it start in 202. Currently there is no feature to split by years when you input the budget. But you can run actual vs budget for your project using this method.

@@SteveChase1 So basically if I create a 2023 budget with the same job, I'll get the total budget v actual. Is that accurate? Thank you!

@@lauriSelib Not exactly. When creating budgets for projects you have that span 2 years, you have to make sure when you set up the budget by customer (ie project) that you start the annual budget using the same fiscal year that your first actual transaction is. So if you had 3 transactions in Dec and all the rest in the following year you have to make sure your budget is set up for the year prior. Once you run the budget actual vs budget it can be expanded to as many years as you want but the key it making the budget use the first year of the very first actual transaction that went though. It's a bit wonky after you run the report to go in and filter it out by totals only and the customer.

If you want to move your estimate to a project you can do that BUT only if the estimate is not yet linked to an invoice. If that is the case you only need to open the estimate and then change the customer to the project. It gets a little tricky on trying to go in the past and move old estimate and invoices to a project and requires step by step assembling and then relinking it to the new project.

@@SteveChase1 oh thank you sir , it helped a lot!

manual journal entry would be the case here. However if you use progress invoices could help where you split estimates into multiple invoices and purchase orders into multiple bills.

Hello, this can be complicated process to convert to project. It can be done but it is difficult to undo on the transactions with estimates, invoices and partial payments because it involves unlinking the customer credits. But for just straight expenses it is pretty straight forward in going into each transaction and changing the customer drop down and selecting the project. Consider running the profit and loss report by customer first with a filter on the customer and all dates and saving that report first before you attempt to register and switch them to projects.

Inventory has to be set up from your product/service list as an inventory item first. Then you can use Purchase Orders and Bills to pay for inventory that is linked to the project. If you sell that inventory you map the income account to like sales and the expense account to a purchases or cogs account. QBO uses FIFO inventory reporting.

@@SteveChase1 thanks for your reply, I have already set up the inventory and the product is already in my inventory, I have issued a lumpsum invoice value of the project and want to add my inventory items in the cost section, how can I do that, please help me

@@abdulghaffarmalik184if you want to see the project profitability you will need to ensure that all purchases/costs associated with the project are linked. These transactions can be a PO, Bill, expense or check transaction type. Each of the these should have an option drop down for customer/project field. After you run the project profit and loss report make sure don’t forget to view by either accrual or cash basis based on your reporting preferences. If the reports are correct we might need to look at how your product/service items are mapped to income and expense accounts.

project notes can only been seen for QBO users who have permissions to the customers.

There is no alert that I am aware of. That would be an awesome feature if you want to provide feedback to the software engineers you can click the gear icon then provide feedback.

go on the invoice and payment and the customer/ project you need from the dropdown

do you have overhead coded to one dedicated account from the Chart of account? and are you inputting the project name somewhere with your hours?

Yes you can. On the PO and or Bill, you would select the customer(project) in each of the line items for the customer drop down.

@Steve Chase hi Steve ty. I did that but it posted the total amount of the invoice to each project instead if the individual cost.

@@paulinemacdougall7069 Oh I misunderstood your question. The answer is No and only 1 invoice can be applied to 1 project. So you would need to either create a journal entry to reallocate income to multiple projects or break it up into multiple invoices. I was earlier replying about Bills to Vendors.

I have the same question... @steve

Typically 3rd party payroll should come in as a journal entry. If you use Gusto for example there is a way to integrate your payroll costs to QBO through a journal. Then when you open the journal you can select the customer:project from the name drop down on the right side of the journal.

I know some non profits use projects to track their grant receipts and expenditures.