It's my pleasure to assist you regarding estimates, jeffreaper.
There are thing we need to consider if you can't locate the estimate when creating an invoice. We have four statuses for estimates. These are Pending, Accepted, Closed and Rejected.
The Closed status means that you already converted into invoice everything that's on the estimate and we can't create another invoice from it. The Rejected status means that you cannot create an invoice from it. This happens if you entered an Expiration date when creating the estimate. This could be the reason why it disappeared when creating an invoice.
You can still open it and change the status to Accepted. From the Sales tab, click Customers. Select the customer, locate and select the estimate you created. Under the Customer name, change the status to Accepted. Once done, we can now convert it into an invoice. Here's an article about progress invoices in QuickBooks Online for your reference.
We also have Estimates by Customer report to see and review all the estimates. You can pull up this report in the Reports tab. I'd like to share this guide on how to set up and use estimates.
Comment below if you need further assistance with this. Wishing you all the best!
