How to set up and use projects in QuickBooks Online

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 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. If you don’t see your customer here you can add them. You can also change this later if you change your mind. The Start and End date are optional. You can edit the project later and add them when you begin and end work on the project. 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. 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. Check out this video to learn more about project reports. Now you can set up your own projects in QuickBooks and start tracking their profitability.