Can I make a transaction (journal entry or invoice) pending in Quickbooks Online?

Hi there, 

Sometimes the transactions you create will remain open until you receive or make a payment. This is QuickBooks' version of a pending transaction.

Take a look at this article that guides you through the process of creating an invoice transaction: How to create an invoice. When you get to the bottom of the article, you'll see a section on how to receive payments. Until you complete this step, your transaction will remain "pending" or "open".

The process works in a similar way for all other two-step transactions, such as an Estimate. Here's how to set up and use estimates. Until this estimate has been accepted, the transaction will remain open. 

Journal entry's work slightly differently. Since this transaction is recorded and completed in one single step, there's no way to keep it in 'pending' or 'open' status once created. I'd be happy to pass along your feedback about this to my team for review. 

I hope this helps answer your question. Let me know if there's anything else I can assist with.

Have a great day!

Need to send an invoice

Hi mahandra,

Sending invoices is an essential task for your bookkeeping with QBO. Luckily, QuickBooks Online makes this process simple, allowing you to send invoices directly from your account. 

After you've created your invoice in QBO, you can send it by following a few simple steps. I'll explain how to create and send an invoice below. 

1. Click + New.

2. Select Invoice.

3. Enter your customer name and email address, along with all other information needed for your invoice form.

4. When saving your invoice upon completion, make sure to click Save and Send. There's three options for saving: Save and Close, Save and send link, and Save and Send. 

5. Review the Preview, then click Send. 

That's all there is to it. Now your customer will receive their invoice in no time. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to our tech support team.

Cheers. 

the problem is that I don't want to have to pay the GST on an invoice until it is paid in full, however I would still like to have the invoice in my Accounts receivable.  Is this possible in QBO?

Hi Crescent, thanks for joining the discussion. I know how important it is to have control over your bookkeeping. I want to make sure I'm fully understanding your question in order to help. Are you creating partial invoices for your customer? If so, are you trying to invoice them for the transaction amount before taxes, then collect the tax on the final invoice? 

I want to make sure we're on the same page. Let me know and we'll take it from there. 

I also need to make customer invoices "pending" until I send them. I make them, then the owner reviews them (sometimes many months later) and then I am approved to send them.  I used to mark them "pending" in QBD and I don't see that feature in QBO.

Also, the ones I had marked "pending" in QBD didn't seem to import over to QBO of which I had about 50 or so invoices saved that way.  Is there a way to find those?  Or are they gone forever? 

Thanks for joining in on this thread @catbee. As you'll see from @AddieC's response to the original poster, an Invoice in QuickBooks Online exists in a pending state or Open until there's been a Payment received against it.There isn't a way to change the status from Open to Pending for an Invoice.

When it comes to locating the invoices that were marked as Pending in QuickBooks Desktop, it's worth checking out our article on What to expect when you switch from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online. In the Invoices section you'll see that Progress Invoices and don't convert. The Pending sales section indicates that "Pending transactions from your QuickBooks Desktop won't convert to QuickBooks Online". Since you're having trouble locating those invoices, it's safe to say that they haven't imported into QBO. You'll want to recreate these.

One thing to consider would be creating Estimates that you can then convert to Invoices once you've gotten the go-ahead from the business' owner. You'll find the steps for how to create an Estimate as well as how to convert it in this article: Create and send estimates in QuickBooks Online.

Let me know if there's more I can do to help. In the meantime, I suggest submitting feedback on a pending Invoice feature. Our product development team wants to know what features and improvements our users want to see. Have your voice heard by navigating to the Gear icon, then choosing Feedback.

Enjoy your day!

Has anyone been able to figure out how to make an invoice pending within QBO? (like we were able to do in QBD)

Hello alspumps700. Thanks for chiming in on this thread. The function you've described above isn't available. I can see the benefit of having this function and I encourage you to send feedback about this to our engineers. You can send feedback by clicking on the Gear icon and looking for Feedback. 

Let me know if you have other questions by leaving a comment below. I'll be one message away.