QuickBooks Desktop Projects Hourly Cost Rates

Thanks for checking in with us, deltabird.

In QuickBooks Desktop, we can enter hourly cost rates (burden rates) for projects (for employees and contractors) as job costs. Job costing means tracking the expenses for a job and comparing those expenses to your revenue. You can see how much money you spend and make for each job with QuickBooks Desktop's job costing tools. Let's make sure we set up each item with enough information. The level of detail in your Item List will determine the preciseness of your job cost reports. See the Learn how to add, edit and delete items in QuickBooks Desktop article for more details. 

First, set up a Customer:Job for each of your job. This enables you to keep track of your income and expenses on a job-by-job basis and can simplify your bookkeeping if you add another job for that customer in the future. For the next steps, just check out the Tracking job costs in the QuickBooks Desktop article. To track your sales and expenses using predefined customer, job, and sales reports, you can check out the Customize customer, job, and sales reports in the QuickBooks Desktop article. 

Visit our Help Articles page for more insights about managing your business in your software.

Feel free to update us after performing the solutions, as I want to ensure this is resolved for you. Just reply to this post and I'll get back to you. You have a good one. 

Hi RCV- Thank you for the reply. I have a follow-up question.  I created a project in QuickBooks Desktop. I also created an Item for the service performed. However, when you create an item, you have to assign an account to it. This is not what I am referring to because I want to capture the cost of time incurred whether or not the cost has been posted to an account.

In QuickBooks Online, you can create cost rates for employees and track their costs without posting the cost to an account.

Is there a function in QuickBooks Desktop that allows you to track the cost (hourly cost rates) of work performed on a project without having to post to an expense account?

Hey there, @deltabird. 

Thanks for following up with us. I hope you're enjoying the day so far.

In QuickBooks Desktop, you do have the option to set custom rates or prices for employees. Such as a Billing rate level. Billing rate level lets you set custom service item rates for different employees. You can use them if you find that one standard rate for a given service is not always sufficient. 

Let me walk you through the steps to set up the billing rate level for employees.

To create:

1. From the Lists menu, select Billing Rate Level List.
2. Click on the Billing Rate Level drop-down then choose New.
3. Enter the billing rate level name then pick the billing rate type.

For additional details about how to use our billing rate level feature, check out Set up custom rates or prices for employees, vendors, or customers. 

Please know that this feature is only available in our Contractor, Professional Services, and Accountant editions of QuickBooks Desktop. If you don't use one of these editions, I'm happy to submit a feedback request to our Product Development Team. Our product developers review each request and consider them for future updates. 

Please let me know if you have further questions or concerns. Take care and have a wonderful weekend! 

Hi Tori-

Thank you so much for the reply.  I looked at the information but that related to billable rates - which related to revenue. I am asking about the expense side, the cost of the employee/contractor generating the service. How do I set the cost rates for their hours worked. 

Thanks for updating the thread, @deltabird,

You can directly assign the cost to the item used for billing. However, costs (Expense) will only reflect when you create expense transactions. If you mark the item as billable, the system will assign it to the customer transaction with the Sales Price (Income).

This is the normal process in QuickBooks for billable transactions. The level of detail in your Item List will determine the preciseness of your job cost reports. Learn how to add, edit and delete items in QuickBooks Desktop.

If you need to use the cost on both on the expense and on invoices, you can simply update the amount as you create the transactions.

If you need further clarification about this process, let me know in the comment below. I'll be right here to share some more insights to help you. Have a good one!

how can you have the cost changed by employee? Seems like the billing rate level only works on the customer side. We are wanting a service items costs to change depending on the employee. 

Welcome back to the QuickBooks Community, Rebeccam2. I'll be sharing details on the difference between billing rate levels and price levels in QuickBooks Desktop. Then, ensure you can send feedback so the option you want to perform will make it possible.

When you set up new items in QBDT, you enter a standard service rate or price. Then, you can set up custom rates or prices for particular employees/vendors, or customers. That said, you might use Billing rate levels to let you set custom service item rates for different employees and vendors. While Price levels let you set custom pricing for various customers or jobs.

Since you want a service item costs to change depending on the employee, this isn't currently available in QuickBooks Desktop. With this, I encourage you to submit feedback. These requests and suggestions are forwarded to the Product Development Team for consideration in future updates. To start with, you'll have to go to the Help icon and choose Send Feedback Online.

Lastly, you may refer to this article to view different details on how to make any changes or update your items in QBDT: Add, edit, and delete items.

I'll be around to help if you have any other questions about this concern. Just let me know by leaving a comment below. Have a nice day ahead.

Christie, 

Just to clarify, there is no way to have the cost associated with an item change either by employee or vendor or a specific cost tied to a certain employee/vendor?

We currently are using a standard cost for everyone that is associated with said cost code (see attached photo) but are wanting it to change via position. 

You're correct with your thinking, @Rebeccam2. 

Service item costs can not change depending on the employee, vendor, etc position. As my colleague has mentioned above, this would be the perfect opportunity to submit this suggestion to our Product Development Team. This way, our developers can review the feedback request and consider it for a future update. 

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Take care! 

Did you ever figure out how to do what you wanted on desktop?  We are trying to solve the same problem and we can do it on quickbooks online but can't figure it out on desktop.

Hi there, enjnir.

Can you share more details about your concern? Are you also trying to set up hourly cost rates or billing rates per employee?

We're asking these questions to make sure that we give you the right information to sort this out.

Please reply back to us to share more details. We look forward to it.