Negative invoice

Hi cls23,

It's great to have you join us in the QuickBooks community! I'll help you sort this out.

Jobs change between estimates and invoices all the time. The great thing about estimates in QuickBooks is you can use them to create invoices through progress invoicing if things stay the same or simply create an invoice without the estimate listing the material actually used for the job.

It sounds like you haven't actually received a payment for the job from this customer yet. Because of that, you wouldn't create a credit memo on their account. Estimates are non-posting transactions (meaning they don't affect your books), so creating a credit would offset their balance and give them a credit they don't need.

I hear what you're saying about your customer wanting a transaction that shows them both what the estimate had and then what is actually being invoiced for the job. There isn't a way to enter all of those items on a single transaction. A workaround that you can consider is using the Customer message section of the invoice to outline what was originally entered on the estimate and what the difference is.

I hope that helps. Have a good evening.

@cls23 

Well I disagree with @LauraAB , you can show changes in QBO.

A quote (estimate in QBO) is non posting so you can show anything you want. ie

Job, blah blah, $3,333 will show at the bottom as a total of the blah blah items

then add the change items
widget A, qty -80, $1, total -$80
widget B, qty -1, $1, total -$1
widget C, qty 50, $0.40, total $20
widget D, qty 1, $5, total $5.00
sub total, -$105

and the bottom number to the total estimate will reduce by 105 and show a total of $3,228

QB Desktop doesn't let you create negative Estimates; we originally tried to do this with an Estimate before trying the Invoice / Credit idea.

did you look at my response, it is the full estimate for the job, the changes are reflected as negative and positive, and the resulting change in the total job cost is updated

No, you can't create a brand new negative estimate. But you can adjust an existing estimate - aka Change Order: Open the estimate in question, on the first blank line, select the Item being reduced and enter a negative $ amount in the rate column. This reduces the estimate by the unused item value.

Simply add the alternate Items being used to increase the Estimate. 

Altering an existing Estimate is what we've been trying to do; I just tried it one more time using the negagive in front of the quantity and then again using the negative in front of the amount -- neither scenario worked, I got the same message which is that a negative estimate can't be saved.

The customer is a government agency and the original job is massive; they want all of the change orders, (cost additions & deletions), listed separately from each other and not included with the original quote because they'll each have different coding etc.  -- I'm not exactly sure why but I think it has to do with some of their internal departments that the work is being done for.

The Estimate is for your internal control. In my experience, I have never had a Customer tell me how to use my own internal accounting software - QB.

This is how I have historically handled Customer Jobs:

Start the Job Binder, labelling all the sections.

Create the Estimate in QB

Use the Estimate to create the Formal Contract to present to the customer . File the Contract in the Job Book.

When the Customer submits a Change Order, record the Change Order (including the CO #) on the Estimate. File the CO in the Job Book and add it to the Change Order List at the beginning of the CO Section.

You are now complying with the customer by listing each CO separately. This does not mean that you have to create a separate CO in your accounting software.

Also, while I can't see exactly what you are doing, the screenshot I posted earlier definitely illustrates that the Estimate can be altered with a CO (both negative and positive).

@impossible 

We don't typically allow customers to tell us how to use our software either but the circumstances of this job are not typical either - and if laying out the charges / credits the way the customer requires them to be laid out prevents payment from being held up, we're more than willing to accomodate their needs if we can. 

Your screenshot only shows a small negative adjustment to the original estimate which doesn't put the total amount of the Estimate into a negative balance, (an Estimate with a negative total is what QB doesn't allow), that's not my issue as we do not want to just make minor adjustments to the original Estimate.  I've worked with software before that had the ability to issue positive or negative Change Orders that would link to the original Estimate or Invoice -- if  QB had that ability it would solve my issue but so far it doesn't look like there's a solution to our issue using this software.

"the net difference of the items that we won't land up selling to them versus what we will be selling to them is negative.  They would like something showing all of the items together. 

For example, this is what the changes in materials sold may look like:

Quoted materials not used:

-80   Widget A           -$80.00

-1      Widget B           -$50.00

Addititional materials not included in original quote:

50     Widget C            $20.00

1        Widget D             $5.00

Net difference  -$105.00"

It was not originally clear that the NET DIFFERENCE had to be tracked separately for each CO. And you are correct - QB Contractor Edition does not do this. I'm not sure if perhaps the Enterprise Edition will.

One of my bigger Construction clients had created a dynamic Excel Template to track CO's, Draws, Holdbacks, and many other items that were imported into QB.