Create and manage projects in QuickBooks Online

Learn how to set up and manage projects in QuickBooks Online Plus, Advanced, and Accountant.

Use Projects in QuickBooks Online to track your project’s profitability. You can add project income, expenses, labor costs, and run project-specific reports from a single dashboard. If you need to, you can add old transactions to new or ongoing projects.

To watch more how-to videos, visit our video section.

Learn how to:

• Turn on projects
• Create a new project
• Change the customer assigned to a project
• Add new transactions to a project
• Add existing expenses to a project
• Add existing timesheets to a project
• Add existing invoices to a project
• Track your labor costs
• Keep everything running smoothly

Turn on Projects

By default, projects is already turned on in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced. But if you use QuickBooks Online Accountant, you’ll need to turn Projects on.

Note: If you turn on Projects in QuickBooks Online Accountant, it’s a permanent setting and can’t be turned off.

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Create a new project

1. Sign in to QuickBooks Online.
2. Go to Projects (Take me there).
3. Select New project.
4. In the Project name field, enter the project name.
5. Select a customer from the Customer ▼ dropdown.
6. Enter a Start date and End date for the project.
7. Select a project status from the Project Status ▼ dropdown.
   Note: You can also add more project info in the Notes field.
8. Select Save.
   
   You can now add both new and existing transactions to the project.

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Change the customer assigned to a project

Note:

• All past invoices and estimates for the project will link to your new customer.
• You’ll need to send any unpaid invoices or pending estimates to your new customer.

1. Go to Projects (Take me there).
2. Find and select the project you want to change the assigned customer for.
3. Select Edit.
4. Select the new customer from the Customer ▼ dropdown.
5. Select Save.
6. Review the prompt, then select Assign new customer.

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Add new transactions to a project

Add new transactions like invoices, expenses, or estimates to your project. This won’t affect any of your accounts or change how your transactions are categorized. You just mark them as a part of a project, so you can keep track of its income and expenses.

There are two ways to add new transactions. You can create the transaction in QuickBooks as you normally would. Just enter the project name in the Customer/Project ▼ dropdown. Or follow these steps to create a new transaction from within projects:

1. Go to Projects (Take me there).
2. Find and select the project you want to add a transaction to.
3. From the Add to project ▼ dropdown, select the type of transaction you want to add.
4. Enter the details for the transaction like you normally would.
5. Select Save and close.

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Add existing expenses to a project

If you have existing expense transactions in QuickBooks, you may add them to a project. This helps you keep track of your project's expenses.

1. Go to Expenses, then Expenses (Take me there).
2. Find and select the transaction you want to add to your project.
3. In the Customer / Project column, select the ▼ dropdown, then select the project you want to add the transaction to.
   Note:
   • Do this for each expense item you want to add to your project. This is different from the payee for the expense.
   • If you don’t see the Customer / Project column, go to Settings ⚙ and select Account and settings. Then, turn on Track expenses and items by customer from the Expense section.
4. Select Save and close. You may also select other save options.

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Add existing timesheets to a project

If timesheets aren't billable, but you still want to add them to a project to track your profitability, you can find and add them from the Time menu or in the Weekly Timesheet. This depends on your account type.

If you see the Time menu:

If you don’t see the Time menu:

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Add existing invoices to a project

Creating new invoices to add to a project is simple (see Add new transactions to a project), but adding existing invoices to your project—especially ones linked to a payment—requires a little caution before you edit them. Here’s how to add existing invoices to your project.

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Track your labor costs

There are two options for tracking your project’s labor costs. After you run payroll, you can see your labor costs using your actual payroll expenses. Or, you can add the hourly cost rate for each employee and QuickBooks will multiply the hourly cost rate by the hours worked to calculate your labor costs.

Learn how to set up, track and view your hourly labor costs.

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Keep everything running smoothly

Now that you understand how to track project costs and profits, here’s how to make sure what you’re seeing is accurate. Select a project to view each of these tabs.

• In the Overview tab, use the Income and Costs columns as guides. Make sure the correct column total increases when you add invoices, expenses, and weekly timesheets. If you use the Payroll Expenses method for job costing, timesheets won’t increase your costs in the Overview tab until you run payroll.
• The Time Activity tab breaks down your team’s work by date. It also provides the total labor costs for each employee and service you offer so you can track the costs of different parts of your project.
• The Transactions tab lists all transactions associated with a project. You can complete tasks directly from this screen, such as converting an estimate to an invoice.
• Review your Time cost by employee or vendor reports every month. Make sure you’ve correctly tracked all project-related work hours. If you’re missing hours or counting too many hours, your profit totals will be inaccurate.

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