Tracking project progess

mapco · ‎May 18, 2022

I am new to QBO advanced, but have been a desktop user for over 20 years and I am trying to find a way to track project status or progress. We are a service company and do not have any inventory or sell products only services

I have multiple customers with multiple projects at the same time and spans more than a year.

We create a project for a customer, within that project we create an estimate titled "Work Order"

This work order can have between 1to 60 things that we have to address and report back to the customer advising the status of each thing (I am not using items here to avoid any confusion)

Each thing may require different directions for staff to act on.

Example Thing 1, was brought into the shop to repair

Thing 2, we have to order parts for

Thing 3 we have assigned to another vendor to take care of an invoice us.

Thing 4 we have to have 2 or more people to pick up.

Previously in desk top I created items named for the examples above (I have 10) and used the account other income with a nominal amount for each item. (Item= In shop, account=other income, amount= .02) I also used 2 AR accounts (Receivables, Work Orders) (On the create invoice page I could select the account to post)

With this setup I could create a report that would give me everything currently in progress and grouped by service item chronological. This report gave me information on everything in progress with one click.

As things would progress notes were added to the invoice on the appropriate line item (Item=parts Description= parts ordered 5-18-2022 ) and this would show up on the report.

So if I have 3 customers, with 5 projects each, and each project has 10 things that give me 150 things to track and not let fall between the cracks.

These items transferred when I uploaded to QBO as services/products.

In short I need a report that shows all in progress projects the customer, the project, a description of what has taken place and the date. This could be either grouped by customer/project, or by line item.

I have tried many different ways to create this report using estimates and product/service to no avail. Downloading to excel and adjusting is way too cumbersome for a dynamic report that is updated on a daily or hourly basis

Any idea how I can do this with QBO. I am open to any ideas and willing to change things up to meet our goal.

I hope this is clear enough to follow.

Thanks in advance for any help or advise.

Mark_R · ‎May 18, 2022

Thank you for sharing detailed information, @mapco. This will help me provide the most suitable report you can run to show all the data you need for your in-progress projects.

Before we start, please know that QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT) and QuickBooks Online (QBO) is a different software with dissimilar functionalities. Thus, there are some reports that you can run and customize within QBDT but not on QBO.

In QBO, you'll need to run two different reports to get the data you need and export them into an Excel file. Firstly, let's run the Project Profitability Summary report to show all the in-progress projects by customers, projects, and dates. Here's how:

Click the Reports from the left menu.
Search for the Project Profitability Summary report.
Select the date range from the Report period drop-down.
Click the Customize button.
Go to the Filter section, then choose In progress from the Project Status drop-down.
Customize the project start date and end date.
Click Run report.
Then, click the Export icon and select Export to Excel.

Once done, you can run the Sales by Product/Service Detail report to view all the service items made for each customer. Let me guide you how.

Go back to the Report menu.
Search for the Sales by Product/Service Detail report.
Choose the date range from the Report period drop-down.
Click Run report. Then, export it to Excel.

After exporting it to Excel, you can combine the reports and adjust them just like you're usually doing.

In addition, I understand that this process is time-consuming for you since your services are updated on a daily or hourly basis. Please also know that we're taking notes of our customer's suggestions and feedback to provide the best user experience. With that said, I encourage submitting feedback directly to our product engineers. This way, they can look into this suggestion and consider adding this report in the future update. To submit feedback, you can go to the Gear icon and select Feedback. Then, enter your suggestion and click Submit.

Let me know how it goes, @mapco. I'll be around if you need more help running reports in QuickBooks Online. Have a good one.

Fiat Lux - ASIA · ‎May 18, 2022

@mapco

Consider having a project management app to integrate with QBO.

KYSMTeach · ‎January 23, 2024

@mapco

I just had my boss request this very same task, to find a software or else that could pull Work In Progress data from QB. I am going to follow the suggested directions, however, I was wondering how did it work for you?

mapco · ‎January 23, 2024

I was eventually able to work this out as I described above and allowed to make a report for all dates. I can print this report directly without exporting to excel.

One thing you have to watch out for is that the Estimate (work order) is marked as accepted as that is a filter you use in creating the report and the project has to be in progress otherwise they do not show up on the report. Once all the work is done you can create an invoice with all the notes, and edit from there. This marks the estimate/work order as completed and takes it off of the list.

Hope this helps

Mapco

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Tracking project progess