Commenting to be another voice saying its ridiculous that you have to delete a project in order to inactivate a customer!! Please fix this! I already sent feedback through my account as well.

I am adding another voice to this. In QB desktop, it was no problem to make a project inactive. I can't go through and change all the existing project data to a new sub-customer once the project is done. That could be hundreds of entries. Plus, they usually span at least one tax season cutoff, and my tax preparer locks the books once everything is in, so I can't change what project or sub-customer an entry is with without entering the unlock code.

There has got to be a way for Intuit to change this. 

I sent a feedback.

I completely agree the inability to make projects and customers inactive because of some stupid QB parameters, like having unbilled charges, is ridiculous and results in the complete opposite of what using a business software is supposed to do, which is make our business more efficient to operate.  I just migrated in May 2024, after being a Desktop user since 1999, and it's been hellish!!!  I hate the QBO!  I have 1506 projects, and 98% of those were inactive on Desktop, but they're all active on QBO and I can't change it!  WTH not?!?!?  Do the developers think we're so incapable of running our business and knowing what we need to see, that they explicitly prohibit us from having a mechanism to see only the information that we need and want to?  I've tried to rename some of the ancient (and I do mean ancient, because we're going back to 1999) customers and projects, but it's doing it one by one!  Who the hell has time to do over a thousand of that???  Quickbooks, your customers (even unhappy ones like me) demand that you make it feasible for us to choose what information we choose to see and use.  Stop being so arrogant as to think you know what we need to see.  We know how to run our business.  You're not running yours well at all, but ignoring all of these same customer complaints!  Let us decide what is relevant and what isn't, and stop limiting our ability to make it work more efficiently for us.  Keep doing that, and we'll decide it's better to start from scratch with another accounting software.  I'm already halfway there, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.   Fix it!  Stop being so arrogant!  Let us decide what we want to see!  I'm sure you wouldn't want to scroll through hundreds of entries every time you want to look for something that you need.  Fix it!

LET"S GO!!!!!!!!!!! Brilliantly said. 

@Unimpressed user  I couldn't agree more.  We are their last consideration in everything they do.

First, click on the settings gear, then click on "subscription and billing," then click on "cancel subscription."  See what they offer you to stay.  

We stopped using the projects feature for this and several other reasons.  QBO simply does not listen to their clients and until we find a viable software solution we are stuck with work arounds.

I changed our process so that we no longer use projects and each job is keyed in as a sub-customer.  I run everything through in the same way that you would in Desktop. ie: desktop Customer then job, but in QBO it's customer then sub-customer.  My data entry for setting up the jobs now is the same as it is in desktop.

HOWEVER, there are a ton of customers that need to be made inactive so that our active list is relative to our business.  We are still not able to do this.

I've finally had enough. I am converting back to Desktop. I encourage all on this thread to seriously consider it in the hopes that Intuit will feel it in their pocketbook and finally listen to their user base. Desktop is much cheaper than Online and you can archive Jobs as you would expect to. 

For those considering this move, September 30, 2024 is the LAST DAY to make the change (I just found out). You will need to buy your license NOW to be locked in: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/email/final-desktop-plus-sale/. 

Intuit IS NOT LISTENING. Just boilerplate responses like "you should file a suggestion" repeatedly. Meanwhile they prioritize less important updates that don't solve actual pain. The decision to prohibit projects from archiving is the single dumbest development decision I've seen. Enough is enough. 

Adding a work around that we found.

As others suggested, utilize a sub-customer, BUT, in order to have access to the project tools that are not as quickly utilized by Sub-customers, make a project under the sub-customer. Make sure every cost and invoice gets assigned to the project. Once the project is completed and closed out, Delete the project. This will force every item within the project to go up the tree to the sub-customer. So, you don't lose your overall data organization once the project is over, if you need to refer to it later, and yet you can utilize the project tools while the project is open. It also doesn't require a password to do if you set things to require a password to change inputs after the end of a fiscal year.

So, let's same I'm starting a new project for a new customer. I utilize project numbers and name things by the city they are in.

I create "Sample Customer"

I then create "1234 City - Project Name" as a sub-customer of "Sample Customer".

I also make a new project, also named "1234 City - Project Name", and nest it under sub-customer "1234 City - Project Name". This is so I don't have to rename the sub-customer later.

Every item I put in gets assigned to the PROJECT while it's going on.

Once we're all done with the project and ready to make things inactive in QBO, I mark the project complete and then delete it. Now, all my invoices and expenses have gone from the project to the sub-customer in case I need to look back at anything AND I can make the sub-customer inactive.

*Note* The exception to how I do this is when we have projects with multiple parts or buildings. In those cases, each building gets its own project under the sub-customer (1234 Bldg 1, 1234 Bldg 2, etc). Our total invoices/pay apps are broken out into individual QBO invoices for each building, but the total payment is received to the sub-customer. This allows us to track P&L for each building during the project. We just have to do P&L report by customer to see the overall picture for the whole project.

P&L by customer is what we need to do to look at past projects once they have been closed out and the QBO project deleted.

It's convoluted and stupid that it has to be done this way to utilize the project tools and NOT lose information, but at least it's possible.