Skip to main content

SUMMER SAVINGS 90% OFF QuickBooks for 3 months* Ends 8/27

Buy now
Switch to QuickBooks and 70% off for 3 Months
Talk to Sales: 877-683-3280
Hours
Mon - Fri, 5am - 6pm PST
Sat - Sun, 7am - 4pm PST
Product support & help
Need help signing in?
JPNE-IBR
New Member
October 16, 2026
Question

PnL by Job/Customer: Double-booking COGS?

Hi all. 

I am currently cleaning a client’s books and reconciling their sales versus COGS in the PnL report. 

We order our items from several suppliers. Now, here’s the interesting part: 

Client creates a bill for the items order, then set the billable option on the Bill to their customer for dropshipping/order. 

Client invoices the customer for the same item. The billable item from the bill isn’t ported over to the invoice. The invoice is created manually based on the bill/PO document. Now on the PnL By Job report, I can see both the bill AND the invoice for the drilled down total for COGS. 

By experience, only the invoice should appear as COGs, correct? I am seeing lower than reported income % on the report per job/customer. 

I wanted to confirm this before I submit my proposal cleanup. I want to provide as much detail as I can since they handle a large amount of orders spanning years and I don’t want to leave out the details on what exactly is going on on the report. 

1 reply

Lolly_NCQuickBooks Team
QuickBooks Team
October 16, 2026

Yes, you are correct. On a job-profitability report, the revenue-side transaction (the invoice) should reflect the customer-facing Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). When you mark a vendor bill as billable but manually create the customer invoice alongside it, QuickBooks fails to link the transactions. The bill line stays flagged as open and unbilled, while the manual invoice creates a separate line item. This duplication can double-count job expenses on the Profit & Loss by Job report, lowering the reported profit margins.

 

To clean up historical data spanning multiple years, you can either link open billable charges to their respective customer invoices to eliminate the duplicate expense, or update the item setup so manually created sales items post to an income account rather than duplicating COGS. Before submitting your proposal, run the Unbilled Costs by Job and Time by Job reports in QuickBooks Desktop to identify unlinked charges and scope the full extent of the cleanup.

 

If you need additional information, please respond to this thread. I'm here to assist you.

Need QuickBooks guidance?
Log in to access expert advice and community support instantly.
Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement