Hi, this is Jason from the QuickBooks team.
If you have QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced you can use Projects to track income and costs for specific projects
or across multiple projects, so you can measure project profitability.
Let’s go over how to set up projects and then assign income and costs to a project.
We’ll also cover how to add labor costs to your project.
To start, go to Business overview…Projects.
Note that your navigation may look like this.
Select New project.
Enter a project name and select the customer you’re doing the work for.
You can also change this later if you change your mind.
The Start and End date are optional.
By default, projects start “In progress” but you can choose a different status.
And then enter any additional notes.
Select Save when you’re done.
Now you’ve set up a project. There’s no info in here yet, but that will change as you record transactions.
As you record new transactions, like estimates and invoices, select the Project from the Customer field.
Then fill out the rest of the transaction like you normally would.
There are a couple ways to assign costs to a project.
Go to your transactions and when you see one that is for a project, open it and select the project in the Customer field.
If you want to include it on a future invoice, select the billable box.
You can also assign costs when you record a bill, a check or an expense manually.
Just select the project in the Customer/Project field.
Once you save, you can see the expense assigned to your project.
These numbers will update as you add more income and expenses to your projects.
If you use QuickBooks Online Advanced, you can also set up project estimates and track your estimate versus actuals on the project dashboard and reports.
Check out this video to learn more about project estimates.
You can also track the hourly costs for your employees and contractors who work on the project.
First, set up your workers’ hourly costs.
Go to the Projects page and select Employee hourly rate.
If you don’t see an employee listed then select Add Employee.
Enter their name and Save.
Enter the rate you want to use for the project.
If you want help calculating one, select the calculator icon.
Enter their hourly wage and any other costs you want to capture.
Select Add…then Save.
You can enter the time they work in QuickBooks or in QuickBooks Time.
Note you may see different options on the timesheet depending on whether or not you use QuickBooks Payroll.
Make sure to enter the project in the Customer or project field.
After you save the time, you’ll see the time next to the project.
If you use QuickBooks Payroll and you don’t see any costs, select the Employee rate drop down menu and switch to Hourly Costs.
When you’ve completed a project you’ll see your total income, expenses and profit margin.
You can also mark the project completed so you’ll have more room on the Projects page.
If you want to see this project again select Completed under Status.
Now you can set up your own projects in QuickBooks and start tracking their profitability.