what happens to the link connected to the customer? or if this invoice was sent should I do the same steps?

Hi MMC2014,

If the invoice is still open or unpaid you can link the project to the particular invoice and customer. And save and send the invoice with the same steps in sending an invoice. If the invoice has been marked as paid, and you, later on, added the invoice to a project. The payment linked to the invoice will be removed or unlinked to the invoice. You'll have to link and add the payment back to the invoice.

Here's how to add a paid invoice to a project:

1. Click on the Sales tab.
2. Locate and select the invoice wanted to link to a project.
3. Click on Edit invoice.
4. Select the Customer drop-down and select the project.
5. Click on Save.

Reconnect the payment to the invoice:

1. Click on the Accounting tab, and click on Chart of accounts.
2. Locate and select the payment for the invoice.
3. Click on Edit, it will open the payment.
4. In the Outstanding Transactions section, select the invoice you wanted to link the payment to.
5. Click on Save and close.

The invoice should show in the projects tab and your projects report after.

You can check this link to learn more about Projects and Add existing invoices to QuickBooks Online Projects.

Feel free to post again in the Community if you have more questions!

I am having the exact same issues.  This is really ludicrous that we can not add an existing invoice to a project.  To delete an invoice and then redo and change the invoice is illegal in our accounting laws, this is really not an option.

Its a basic functionality that is required of using a projects function..... surely this is now years on and this has still not been resolved.  

We do hundreds of quotesd and can not possible create a project for every singel quote... seriously .... ... 

It would probably take a programmer less time to make this change than it does a single user to re-create a detailed invoice. 

God software should take the heavy lifting burden of the end user. Not create more work.

Is this lazy or incompetent? 

I hear you, @Treasures Of The World.

I would also agree your experience with the delivery of communication lacks quality given how you manage to simplify the goal you wish to accomplish in this interaction.

I recommend letting your voice be heard by our higher management, throughout the entire platform, by sending your experience via feedback. I'll walk you through the steps to accomplish this.

1. Go to the Gear icon.
2. Under PROFILE, select Feedback.
3. Describe how an option to add existing invoices to projects helps you work efficiently in QuickBooks.
4. Select Next.
5. Click Skip and send message.

I'm including our Customer Feedback for QuickBooks Online page to track the status of your request and get the latest updates from our developers. Updates such as how the recent enhancement made to QBO helps our business owners, like you.

It'll always be my pleasure to help if you've got other questions aside from working with projects and sales invoices in QuickBooks. Use the Reply button and leave your comment below so that I, @JonpriL, can lend a helping hand.

Over 2 years and still same issue. 

Maybe its time to do something about it.

Shouldn't be so hard to just link an invoice or estimate to a project.

I figured it out.

Use the "NEW LAYOUT" and change link with the project.

Worked for me

HI, okay thats great!  Please could you be more specific with steps and maybe screen shots.  What new layout did you use and did it bring in all transaction lines from the invoice and the quotation?

Adding my two cents for any who come here late to the game like me. Hopefully this will help.

Our workaround: rather than deleting and then recreating the invoice to get it into the project, we tried copying the invoice and changing customer to the project. That worked, the line items and numbers did not wipe out to zero. Save new invoice. Insert happy dance. We then went to the payment, deselected applying it to the original invoice and selected applying it to the newly created copy invoice (that is in the project). Another happy dance. Then simply went and voided the original invoice. Happy dances all around.

This way, we didn't have to retype or redo anything else, and it left the old intact until we were satisfied with our changes (never delete first! lol). More->Copy->Change customer to project->Save. Done. 

Another two cents, if it helps: Someone above mentioned not wanting to create a project first before knowing whether they were going to actually get a project out of it: we get this too, we're a family owned flooring business and we have some that decide to go elsewhere or just don't want to move forward for whatever reason--it's the nature of bidding. We had this same discussion, but ultimately decided it was far more beneficial to create everything, going forward, as a project, whether it's a sure thing or not. Otherwise, your books are a mess of sub-customers and projects and trying to retroactively move everything over, it's just a cleaner way to go about it and drastically reduces administrative time/labor. When we get a new RFP, whether residential or commercial, we simply go create a project (done in seconds). If they're a customer we've never worked with before, we can add them in right there from the project creation screen, and their status is simply "not started". Then if they say yes, the project moves to "in progress". If they say no, the project moves to "canceled". If they want something different, they just get a new estimate in the project with a note in the memo field that it's, for example, "Tile" where the other is marked "Carpet", etc. 

We chose *not* to convert completed jobs into projects because that would be an administrative nightmare (subcustomer hayday from desktop). But for all current and future, projects it is. 

Ultimately, starting every new thing from the projects module is quicker and cleaner both in the starting of it (adding customer, creating estimate, etc) *and* when the customer makes a decision (everything is already there, nothing to be moved or changed except status). 

If you're worried about having too many projects to sort through, the search bar inside your projects module makes that concern moot. Simply start typing and it narrows down with every letter typed. We have only just switched to quickbooks online from desktop and we have roughly a hundred projects. I don't have to scroll to find anything, i just start typing what i'm looking for. The star feature is also handy, we use it for any projects that crews are actively working on (even though we don't need to because of the search function). Makes those quick access and they appear at the top, so the first dozen in the list are our "being installed right now" projects. 

I appreciate you for sharing your workaround and helping address the issue, jessbbg.

Please let me know by clicking the Reply button below if you have any concerns related to QuickBooks. I'm always here to assist you and you're always welcome to post here in QuickBooks Community. Take care and have a good one.

Finally something helpful! Wish Intuit had this info easy to find but THANK YOU *jessbbg* for this.

I attempted what you indicated to transfer and existing invoice to a newly created project in a private window but it still says This will remove any linked transactions. ?????????

Hello there,

I appreciate your interest in linking your invoices to the projects you've made. I'm here to clarify things about these features.

I can see how seamless your work will be if the linked transactions won't be removed when adding it to an existing invoice to a project. However, this is currently unavailable in the program. This is because the Project feature does not support linking multiple customer invoices under one Project. 

The invoice was also linked to the customer, that's why it'll be removed once you link it to a project. To fix this, you can delete the invoice and link the Quote to the project.
 

1. Go to the Sales menu and select the Invoices tab.
2. Locate the invoice, click the drop-down arrow under the Actions column, then select Delete.
3. Go to the All Sales tab, then find the Quote. You can select the Filter drop-down to easily locate the transaction.
4. Double-click the quote, then select the project name under the Customer name section.
5. Click Save.

Once done, you can now create an invoice out of the quote. Just select the Create invoice button, then save. I've attached a screenshot below for your reference.

If you want to link multiple invoices to a project, you'll want to consider creating a project as a sub customer. It only allow transactions to be posted under that one name. If you already have existing invoices that you wish to attach under a new project you can do so by:

1. Go to the Sales menu and select the Invoices tab.
2. Select Customer drop down field, click the Project name.
3. Tap Save & Close.

This will then change the invoice assigned from one customer to the sub-customer which is the project you have created, which will then appear under the projects transactions in the Project tab. 
 

For additional reference about the project feature, check out this article: Set up and use the Projects feature.

If you have more questions about projects or other concerns with QuickBooks Online, please let me know in your reply. I'll be around to help you some more. 

Hi JamaicaA,

I'm unable to replicate the steps you describe in the second part of your message. Could you please post screenshots of these instructions please? 

Thank you in advance!

This is unacceptable with an accounts system, as others have saiid above we cannot simply delete or void paid transactions in the system just to add an existing invoice to a project. Moving forward may work but looking back impossible.

Its sad that after almost 3 years this is not resolved by the QB dev team for such a fundamental issue and design flaw = with the workaround proposed it should be prioritised as a bug linked to information governance and accountancy regulations.  if I go back and start voiding transactions then our VAT records would be affected, and having to go back and work through all previous invoices is too time consuming and open to mistake.

Its a massive shame, as seeing budget against spend is again a fundamental report that we should be able to access and would be a major gain in QB functionality. As it stands the functionality may be available but its useless unless we can track back over at minimum the previous 12 months.

Very slow in responding QB team.

Can someone from QB please respond and tell us what the issues are?  Is this something that can not be fixed and if so why?  For others on this thread, is there another accounting system that may work better?  

Bob

Agreeing with Bob's post above - this needs resolving. its lazy that it's not been addressed properly since this was raised.

All accounts systems have failings, hence why we stay with Slow, sorry QuickBooks, but yes, what other systems do people use to track invoice against time?

Thanks for joining the thread, Carrera09s.

I know how important adding an existing invoice to a project is. However, it will remove linked transactions from an invoice. This is why we don’t recommend adding invoices linked to more than one other transaction. You can delete the invoice first and link the Quote to the project as a workaround. You can utilize the steps provided by my peer above.

While this feature is unavailable, I recommend sending feedback to our product developers. This way, they can further review which parts of the program need enhancements and consider adding them to future updates. 

Please know that not all requests will be implemented immediately. With that, we cannot provide a specific timeframe as to when this will roll out. However, you can visit the Customer Feedback page to get updates about the status of your request.

For future reference, here's an article to learn how to track invoice payments: Record invoice payments in QuickBooks Online.

We appreciate your patience on this. Please, feel free to let me know if you require any further information by leaving a reply below. Take care.

There’s no point in requesting a change with the development team. It’s never going to happen, there’s issues that have been going on for 5 years with no response. The platform is junk. 

Xero

Good Afternoon,

So I'm reading through these comments and I am wondering if I am using progress invoicing, I will mostly have more than one invoice for projects. Are you stating that I cannot have more than one invoice/project? If so how would I do this as I always have draws.

Thank you

Hi brayb,

Thanks for joining the thread. You can create as many invoices per project in QuickBooks Online. Let me show you how to create invoices linked to a project.

1. Go to Projects tab. 
2. Click on a project on the list.
3. On the Add to project dropdown menu, select Invoice. 
4. Enter details on the invoice and then click on Save.

For more detailed information, you can check these articles:

Set up and send progress invoices in QuickBooks Online

Create and manage projects in QuickBooks Online and Accountant

Feel free to drop a comment below if you have any other questions, we're here to help. 

BUT more importantly. How do you add existing estimates and invoices to projects?  Projects are often built after an estimate has been agreed not before, so having to rekey in the estimate or invoice is duplication and unnecessary.  

QB you need to fix this, its a really useful part of the system but unusable in its current format until you enable the linking of existing invoices and estimates.

Surely you have developers capable of adding this feature?

Here are the steps

1. Create new project

2. Go to your estimate and change the name to the new project name

3. Save the estimate

4. Create invoice.

Voila the invoice is now in the project.