I need much help setting up to get reports like the attachment here.  I just started for this company that is 3+ years in business.  I explained I am not an accountant or QBO expert, but I know my way around if a system is in place.  Once I started I did what I could but Im afraid I have made an even bigger mess.  I need complete step by step hand holding.  Probably more than just this forum.  Any suggestions on the free help?

Hello there, Behnke.

In creating journal entries, we'll need to reach out to an accountant to help you identify the accounts we will associate to the transactions. 

We have Customer Support Agents who are on live that can freely help you. They'll give you detailed steps on how to pull up the report with the information you need. 

They're available every Monday to Friday 6 AM – 6 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST) and on a Saturday at 6 AM – 3 PM PST. You can contact us within your QuickBooks Online account.

Let me show you how:

1. Go to the Help ( ? ) icon and click Contact us. 
2. Enter a brief description that you need to create a journal entry and then run a report afterwards. 
3. Click Let's talk. 
4. Choose a way on how to connect with us. 

You're welcome here in the Community. You can always leave a reply below or post again if you need more help. 

Was this ever resolved for those who were asking?  I did not see any answers to solve problems.

I gave up.  It was answers that sent me on a wild goose chase.  I'm using Tsheets now.

Sorry to hear that. I am sure that was not anyone's intention since most come here to try to help. Is T-Sheets doing what you need it to?

No. And I don't think T-sheets is the answer. Plus, it's expensive. I don't understand why a report of real expenses information that has been entered in QuickBooks can't be generated. Why can't QuickBooks we generate a report that subtracts the loaded rate hours and expenses from the lumpsum estimate instead of the invoices?

I just started using it.  I've been with Paychex since February of 2019 and I just cancelled their services.  They are wayyyyy too expensive for a small business like mine.  I would like to see my original question answered easily.  Some of these helpful support people in this forum are well versed with QB but unfortunately I am an intermediate user at best.  Thanks!

Can you tell me why Tsheets isn't the answer?  I'm just curious what I need to be aware of when I am using their product.  Tsheets is much cheaper than Paychex where I just came from.

@teamchambie - For starters, TSheets and Paychex are primarily for two different purposes.

- TSheets are timesheets of course, where employees record hours they work, ideally by project. With TSheets you are still going to need a Payroll Service Provider, like ADP, Paychex, Intuit, etc.

- Paychex is a payroll service that takes Gross labor and computes Net pay after deductions for payroll taxes paid by employee and employer and pays the taxes and the employees' paychecks.

However, I do not recommend any of the above. 

Hi there @teamchambie. I'll, of course, leave it open for other feedback, but you are able to run an Employee Job Costing report through TSheets. Does this address your question? Here's how to set up and run that report:

Notes:

• This report is only available to administrators.
• Pay Rates are required and can be set up in team member Details.

1.  Go to My Team and select a team member.
2. Next to Pay Rate, enter the dollar amount and rate. Only hourly rates will appear in this report.
3. Select Save.

• If a rate is missing for a team member included on a report, or their rates are set to daily or yearly, you will be prompted to add in their hourly rate before proceeding.
  1. Next to each listed team member, enter their hourly rate.
  2. Select Save and Continue.
• If total hours are entered (vs clock-in and out times), the order in which the hours are entered will determine overtime costs.

Download a spreadsheet of the report

1. Go to Reports > Tracking > Team Member Job Costing.
2. Choose the report dates.
3. Choose to Include Custom Field on the report or not (none).
4. Check Group by Job Code if you want the Jobs separated by line breaks.
5. Select Calculate grand totals if you want the hour and rate totals added up for the whole report.
   • If both this and Group by Job Code are selected, the totals will be calculated per job.
6. Next to Filter by Job, do one of the following:
   • To include all jobs: Leave it set to all jobs.
   • To run the report for only one job: Select all jobs and choose the job you want on the report.
7. Next to Filter by Groups/Employees, do one of the following:
   • To include all team members: Leave it set to all employees.
   • To select individual team members: Select all employees, check the boxes next to the name(s), and select OK.
8. Select Run Report. The report displays under the filters. If you make changes to the filters, update your view by selecting Run Report again.
9. (optional) To download the report, select Download CSV. The spreadsheet displays. If it doesn't, click the downloads button. (In Chrome, it's at the lower left.) Or, check in your computer's Downloads file.

Let me know if this addresses your needs. If not, we can keep working together to find a solid solution. 

@Kat24 - I agree T-sheets is not replacement for Paychex, but depends on what you need for biz.

There are usually five main things you may need for a services business (not selling products):

1) Accounting = AP, AR, GL, Financial statements, Tax returns (all businesses need all 4 of these)

2) Payroll = Payment to employees and tax agencies (required by all businesses with employees)

3) Timesheets = Employee hours recorded by project (required in my industry and many others)

4) Project Reporting = Hours/dollars with cost, revenue and profit by project (I need and others)

5) Customer Billing = Hours and/or dollars to bill to customers (I need and many others do too)

Options:

1) QB/QBO or many other systems depending on what you need on list below. (I use several). 

2) ADP, Paychex, Intuit, Gusto (my preference) and many others also depending on list below. 

3) T-Sheets and some of the above also do time sheets, again depending on what you need.

4) Also called Job Costing, this is where big differences begin and how they work with above.

5) Most important end result of all the above since you want quick and easy w/minimal errors.

@Kat24 

You said this:

"I don't understand why a report of real expenses information that has been entered in QuickBooks can't be generated. Why can't QuickBooks we generate a report that subtracts the loaded rate hours and expenses from the lumpsum estimate instead of the invoices?"

What do you consider "loaded rate hours?" Just want to make sure I know what you mean.

To me, "loaded labor rates" are fixed hourly billing rates on T&M contracts, where the "load" is burden rates including Fringe, Overhead, G&A and Fee (profit).

For example, pay rate of $100 per hour plus 30% Fringe, 20% OH, 10% G&A and 5% Fee.

So you bill for each hour $100 + $30 + $20 + $15 + $8.25 = $173.25 per hour.

@Ami_D - Nice of you to reply and I am sure you are not the creator of this report or process so my response is to the greater entity of QB/Intuit or whomever reads this to make improvements.

This is not a Job Cost report, this is an Excel spreadsheet that would be easier to create w/o QB.

Seriously?

First you say:

"Next to Pay Rate, enter the dollar amount and rate. Only hourly rates will appear in this report."

What dollar amount and rate?  Pay rate? Billing rate? How is that different from dollar amount?

- TYPE IN the pay rate?  Right there you already lost the integrity of the data and are using Excel.

- Only shows HOURLY rates, meaning can't multiply to get annual or calc hourly from annual rate?

Job Cost report is a report of all cost related to a job and usually includes revenue to see profit.

I am trying to imagine what a person would even use this report for and why you could not just click a button to get something this simple. I am appalled that after 30 years, QB still can't do.

Sorry for the rant.  Just had to be said.  Assume you will delete and things will never change.

No. What I need is very simple. I need a report that takes our real time spent at our billing rates and subtracts them from our estimate. For loaded rates jobs we bill based on a percentage of completion. Being able to generate this report would let us know if we are on budget. Right now we have to do this by exporting a spreadsheet of the hours for each job for each employee and then add formulas in excel. Why can't QB do this without creating an hourly invoice?

Yes and no. Yes we base our "loaded rates on the bare rate times our overhead multiplier and 10% profit. This is used to estimate our lump some fees. For State and some private work we are required to bill based on a percentage of completion established at the beginning of the project, not actual hours. As a check to see if we are on budget, we want to run a job cost report based on the actual hours at the loaded rates. Our accountant determines our multiplier so we know that it is accurate. We just need to be able to quickly produce these reports for our managers so they can determine if we are on target and making or losing money.

Totally agree for any job or project, minimum requirement is to be able to compare actual cost to budget and amount agreed to bill in contract, so must be able to track progress and profit, etc. 

May we assume that you compute % of completion to bill based on % completion of total cost?

You mention needing:

"a report that takes our real time spent at our billing rates..."

Real time spent is COST.  Billing rates = REVENUE, agree?

Are these cost all input to QB at a level of detail to do the calculations in QB same as Excel?

Are those billing rates setup in QB, that you are able to multiply by hours from time sheets?

QB would not necessarily need to create an actual invoice but would need to compute using those same formulas in QB as you currently add into Excel in order to create a report for you.

I'm not QB expert but have done job cost accounting for Govt contractors for decades so have seen plenty of % completion contracts and billings, etc.  Am I close to confirming your needs?

Ok, as I described but just with two "loads" vs. the four I described.  Yours simpler such as:

$10 Hourly EE Pay rate

x Overhead multiplier

x 10% profit

So if OH multiplier was 50%, you would bill $10 + $5 + $1.50 = $16.50 per hour, correct?

@Behnke - Did you get the help you needed?  Did you find some help for free to work out for you? Just know you are not alone.  It is quite common for folks (owners, bookkeepers and accountants, even CPAs) to make things much worse in QB before you get help.  I see it all the time in my work. 

We have set up Items & Services with our rates based on customer. Items are set up with Type: Service, Item Name, U/M: hour, Rate (full loaded rate) & Account. When timesheets are completed, each production employee selects the client and job and service item along with payroll item appropriate to their level. All QB has to do is generate a report that totals those hours with the associated rates and subtract them from the job estimate. Simple. But it doesn't.

Yes except I don't ask QB to do that math. I enter the rates for each level in Items and services so that employees can enter that item in their timesheets under the appropriate client/job. Problem is QB won't take that info and subtract it from the job estimate. This is not possible in any QB version. Unless someone has a hack, that the people at QB doesn't know about. HELP!

So each employee is setup with pay rate (payroll item) to be included as labor cost paid to them.

And each employee is setup with a loaded billing rate (service item) which = pay rate + OH + fee.

Or are those last two (OH & Fee) only added on after you pull report into Excel?  If the latter, then QB would not even have the amounts needed to be able to subtract from the job estimate, right?

@Teri Not at all!  I can completely understand the frustration and appreciate the honest feedback.  The process I'm describing is strictly in TSheets rather than within QuickBooks, so it is a much-simplified report based only on employee time tracked against a job or project. At this time, pay rates are not imported from QuickBooks so it does require that manual step for now. 

That being said, I will pass this thread and feedback along to our development team so that they are aware of the conversation. I appreciate you taking the time to address so many of the questions in here today and offer feedback on the subject. It is truly valuable to us. 

I understand your frustration.  I would think if all of the data and formulas are setup in QB then it should be able to crank out a report with that information for you like a standard job cost system.

I continue to be amazed that Intuit still cannot do that after 3 decades when other systems can.

Sounds like you are not even able to do customer billing from QB either. You do all manually?

My clients do similar costing and billing from same accounting system and just click to print the customer invoices and can also print a plethora of different reports showing cost, revenue, profit 

by project and they have several. Some have hundreds each month so manual process is no go, especially since they must bill most customers by 3rd working day after month end and we must have a solid audit trail from employee timesheet to customer invoice w/o manual entries added. Since some are billed at actual cost (labor + multipliers we call burdens + fee), some at hourly billing rates, and some like yours which are billed at % complete.  Our multipliers often change during the year so must be recomputed retroactive to the start of the year, so manual is PITA.

When your company grows larger and wants to automate all that, there are systems to do that. The multiplier(s) that your CPA computes for you have to come from actual cost from QB data.  So in a true job cost system, you setup for those multipliers to also be computed by system so you can compare the actual costs that make up multipliers with the estimated ones from CPA.

I must say I have never quite followed the QB workaround they call job costing with using an Estimate and things called Items and Service Items and Payroll Items then subtracting costs... Ugh, sounds painful and i start to doze off when the explanation gets to steps 10-12 where for way too many years I have been spoiled with just a few clicks for all that to compute and send from system.  I assume you are also not required to do GAAP accrual-basis accounting either.    All things to look forward to as you grow.  Hopefully someone will reply here with QB tips.  :)

@Ami_D Thanks for the reply.  This Q&A topic on job costing within QB has gone on for probably longer than you have been alive I hate to say. I have never been able to use QB for my clients but I did use QBDT then QBO for my own business for a decade as I have less requirements to meet. 

Now that I moved my own accounting on to a true job cost system last year where most of my small clients do their accounting for all these years, I realize my nice suggestions have all gone no where to help anyone here as far as the system QB/QBO getting up to speed on job cost. So thought maybe a more direct approach to suggesting improvements might help more instead.  :)

I have nothing to lose, can only potentially help others more down the road during their lifetime.