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rehan-ali
Level 1

How may I generate a report that gives me revenue and gross margin by customer? Our suppliers are not connected with our customers in QBO, so the Revenue=GM in reports.

Since our customers are not linked to our suppliers, when suppliers work through us for our customers, we pay the suppliers and we receive money from the customers, but there seems to be no way for us to generate a report that gives us gross margin by customer. In all our reports, the revenue and gross margin turns out to be the same because there is not expense recorded against the revenue coming from the customers. How can I connect my customers to my suppliers?
1 Comment 1
Rebecca R
QuickBooks Team

How may I generate a report that gives me revenue and gross margin by customer? Our suppliers are not connected with our customers in QBO, so the Revenue=GM in reports.

Welcome to the QuickBooks Community rehan-ali,

 

It's fantastic to see that you've been exploring the different reports that you have at your disposal in QuickBooks Online. Viewing your profit margin in the way that you expect is definitely an important function to have in your small-business accounting software. With QuickBooks Online, you have a variety of customizable reports that you can choose from, as well as a few additional ways that you can connect your expenses to your income and I want to go over those with you. 

 

While there isn't a specific report available that will display your gross margin by customer in connection to your supplier expenses, you can filter the Profit & Loss report by customer and supplier. This will allow you to view the profit or loss from specific supplier-customer relations. Let me explain how you can do that.

 

  1. Navigate to the Reports tab from the left menu.
  2. Locate the Profit and Loss report. 
  3. Click Customize from the upper right corner.
  4. Scroll down to the section titled Filter then expand it with the black arrow.
  5. Check off Customers and Suppliers, specifying from the drop down menu which you'd like to see data for.
  6. Run Report

 

Since there also isn't a way to directly connect your customers and suppliers, I have a couple additional features that I want to bring to your attention. The first is our Projects feature. Projects can be used to calculate income and cost for a specific job that you're working on. This provides you with a clear picture of your profit margin for each job. To use this feature you'll need to turn it on in your settings. The article below goes over all of the steps and shows you how to create a project and add your income and expenses.

 

 

Another feature within QuickBooks Online Plus that I'm confident will meet your needs, is Billable Expenses. A billable expense is one that you incur on behalf of your customer. Your customer reimburses you for the expense when you receive payment for their invoice. Turn on billable expenses by navigating to the Gear icon, then Account and Settings. Select the Expenses tab from the left, then use the Edit pencil to make changes to the Bills and expenses section. You'll want to turn on the following settings, then select Save once complete:

 

  • Show Items table on expense and purchase forms
  • Track expenses and items by customer
  • Make expenses and items billable

 

To make an expense billable, check the box in the Billable column and select your customer from the customer dropdown. When you're ready to invoice your customer for these expenses, select Invoice from the + New button and choose your customer. The billable expense you've entered will populate to the right and you can select Add to add it to the invoice. Check out this article on how to Enter billable expenses for more information on how this feature will benefit you.

 

I know that having a report that ties your customers and suppliers together would be handy, and I know other customers would benefit from the addition of this as well. I'll pass this along to my team, but I want to invite you to submit feedback to our product development team as well. They work on making improvements and adding new features to our products and love to hear from customers like you. Have your voice heard by navigating to the Gear icon, then select Feedback.

 

If you have any additional questions, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm here to help!

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