I appreciate you taking the time to express your concerns, Bray. Let me provide information about using projects to track hard, soft, and contractor costs that are paid using equity in QuickBooks Online (QBO).
To start with, it's not possible to use an equity account in tracking project hard costs, soft costs, and contractor costs as they are expenses that should be assigned to the expense account. If you use equity, you'll receive an error saying you must use an account type like expense, other expense, other current liabilities, other current assets, etc.
For now, what we can do is create a Journal Entry (JE) to transfer the equity funds to the bank account and then include a memo in the transactions as you usually do. I also recommend reaching out to your accountant for further guidance.
To learn more about how to track your labor cost, profitability, and the latest project reports using projects, check out these articles:
If you have any concerns about managing projects, please tag me in the comment section, Bray. I'll assist you in any way possible.