tracking blocks of time

Hi there, @dendoa.

Glad to have you here in the Community. I'm here to share some details about tracking pre-pay for blocks of service time in QuickBooks Desktop. 

When recording pre-payments in QuickBooks Desktop, you need to have it recorded as retainers. To track the hours, you can create an invoice prior to the payment. However, if there are employees or vendors involved you can use time sheet and make it billable.

To set up retainers, you must set up a current liability account for them. This account must be a current liability account because upfront deposits and retainers are liabilities, not income, even though you deposit the money into your bank account.

Here's how:

1. From the Lists menu, select Chart of Accounts.
2. In the Chart of Accounts window, right-click and select New from the pop-up menu.
3. Select Other Current Liability as the account Type.
4. Enter a name for the account (for example, Upfront Deposit) in the Name field.
5. Select Ok.

To learn more about this process, please refer to this article: Manage upfront deposits or retainers. 

If you need further assistance, don't hesitate to reach out to our Customer Care Team.

To reach them: 

1. In your browser, navigate to https://help.quickbooks.intuit.com/en_US/contact.
2. Choose QuickBooks Desktop.
3. Select the issue or topic.
4. Click the Green Phone button to see the support number.

This should get you on the right track, @dendoa. Please know that the Community has your back if you have further questions. Have a happy weekend!

The question was tracking time.

The answer given had to do with money.

The Money might be retainer as liability or as Income. A Cash Basis entity has income when you get the prepayment. You use an Other Charge Item on a sales receipt, linked to Prepayment as income or liability to meet your needs. A Cash Basis entity would probably prefer to use the Sale item, not a Prepayment item, since they Sold the Package already.

You sell someone a block of time, so put that same item from the Sales Receipt also on an Estimate. Now you track actuals using the timesheet functions. Then run the timesheet reports, such as Time by Job or By Job by Item, or whatever. Customize and select to see Estimate, Billable, Not Billable and Billed.

For a Cash Basis entity: Your timesheet task entries need to be Not Billable, since you already got paid.

For Accrual, carrying the prepaid package as liability: they are Billable, because you are allowed to hold that as Liability and need to invoice for the charges later, then use the same prepayment item from the initial Prepayment Sales Receipt, on a Credit Memo for the date of the invoice, where you used Add Time & Costs, to show the prepayment is applied to the amount now being charged as used.

Please see my attachment for the Timesheet comparison reporting.