How can we efficiently track customer holdbacks and payments of holdbacks?

"Currently we use an item code HB which is a 10% deduction on the ivnoice and that puts that money into a current asset accout. Then when the project is complete we create another invoice with the item code HB PO (holdback pay out) which deducts that money from the current asset account and posts it in accounts receivable."

Yes, that is Construction Retention or Retainage. That is Perfect.

"We pull a report monthly to see if we missed anyone that we could invoice. It shows ALL debits & credits and the final balance, not an individual project/customer balance."

You didn't tell us which specific report you are using. You have Two Ways to do this: Item-Based will show the "in and out" such as Item Profit or Job Profitability Summary, filtered on only the HB item, and rows will be customer names.

I prefer this method:
Reports menu > Custom > Custom Transaction Detail. Set it to Total By Name and filter on only the Asset account.

When you see a name has a balance of 0, you Reconcile this account to an Ending Balance of 0, because you are clearing ONLY the transactions from each side for the name(s) that now ends at 0.

Make two versions of this report. One is titled "All Holdback Activity" and Memorize it. Now Filter this report on Cleared Status = No, and retitle this "Current HB Balances By Names" and Memorize this selecting New, not Replace; use this second version to see and manage Outstanding and Over-credited HB.

Hi another option I can suggest you is Receive Payment for an Invoice as partial payment of 90% so balance 10% is receivable and can generate many types of Reports as you need to follow up later.

@aggregate, see the article below on customer retention in QBO.

https://community.intuit.com/articles/1459127-recording-customer-retention-in-qbo

This only works for Customer side....what about Sub-trades...it won't allow you to do that...

Thank you for the comment. The only feasible solution was to create a sub account under my main Holdback account for each project. This way I see a total for the account on my balance sheet then when the project is closed and fully invoiced I can deactivate the sub account.  

it won't allow that on a sub-trade ONLY the customer side...what we have done is...we enter the full expense to the job; under the item section, and in the expense section we code it to as a negative in the liability account we called Sub-trade 10% holdback and we can still code a project name too; when we pay it out we use the same account to offset...after all it is a liability until paid.

Hello,

 

I use these reports, but when the customer has a 0 balance, how do you reconcile that and have it not appear?

thanks