Contractor Expenses not showing Project Summary

Thanks for visiting our forum, @Ceflick10,

Have you tried opening your account in a web browser and checking if the Cost is showing there?

This will help check if this issue is caused by the large data in the cache. It stores your browsing activity and will constantly overwrite itself without deleting the old stuff. This will likely cause QuickBooks to function poorly.

The private window will not save any history making it a good place to identify browser problems. To start incognito mode, use these keyboard shortcuts:

• Google Chrome: press Ctrl + Shift + N  
• Mozilla Firefox: press Ctrl + Shift + P
• Safari: press Command + Shift + N

If you no longer see this alert in private browsing, clear the browser's cache. This will help delete the history of the browser, so you can start in a clean slate. 

I'm adding this article about the Projects feature in QuickBooks Online: Track income, costs, and profitability by project.

Let me know how it goes in the comments. I'll be right here if you need anything else about Projects. Have a good one!

The response to his question did not help me. I have the same exact problem. 

This answer does not help. I have same issues. 

Hi there, Jnog.

I'll share the reasons why you're unable to see the expenses or costs on a project, so you'll be guided to check them.

If the contractor expenses are entered as bills, still unpaid, and you use the Cash accounting method, they will not show up in the project summary. This is because the Cash accounting method only considers the bills as expenses to your business once they are paid. This is contrary to the Accrual method. See more info about the accounting method.

You also want to be sure that you tag the project name so the expenses will be reported under them. It's okay if you don't mark the items as billable. They will still show up.

You can also check out the article about tracking costs to a project for more details.

If you have additional questions, please don't hesitate to go back to this thread.

I use CASH method, and having the same issue. Just to try your point changed the ACCURAL  and still the same issue.

It shows entire income as profit and not counting any expenses as cost to deduct it. please help.

Did QB fixed this issue? Having the same issue and changing it to ACCURAL wont fix the issue.

Thank you for posting here in the QuickBooks Community, @amper. 

I understand how important it is for the expenses to show on the project summary report. Allow me to share additional insights about Project Summary reports in QuickBooks Online.

It can be that the expense transactions were not marked as billable to the project. Make sure to review the Expenses you'd want to check if they are billable regardless of if they are on an Accrual or Cash basis.

We can review this by opening the transactions. Just go to the Projects page, then select the project and look into the Transactions tab to open one and check the Billable column. 

I'm adding this article about the Projects feature in QuickBooks Online: Track income, costs, and profitability by the project.

If there's anything else you need help with the project, let me know by adding a comment. I'm always here for you. Have a good one!

I did change one of the expenses to billable and nothing changed. Still all income is profit and expenses are not deducted.

I see that this issue was going in since December 2020 and escalated to engineering. Can you check to see if there is any update to resolution please.

Hi amper,

Thanks for following up on this and for trying the steps we shared above.

I found a record, but it was about an unpaid billable bill not showing in a project, and the QBO company is on a Cash basis. It was already closed, and I don't see any other escalations about this as of now.

At this point, I would recommend contacting our QuickBooks Online Support. That way, they can use a screen-sharing tool to gather more details on your issue.

If you'll have project expenses (bills) in the future, you can directly enter them in the Project section.

As always, feel free to comment below if you require further assistance. Take care!

I don't understand why you keep on mentioning this article in your answers:  Track income, costs, and profitability by the project. 3 agents are mentioning the same thing

I tell you why, because referring something is better than leaving a comment with no resolution. I can say that, none of the 3 agent actually read that article! They just want to say something, regardless of providing actual solution.  If they were actually experiencing the issue and see that article is just dog and pony show, that would be different story.

I called yesterday, 4 times. first 3 put me on hold over 20 minutes while investigating and disconnected!!! Last person, which I told this is not easy fix she needs contact engineering, this is an ongoing issue and please don't ask me to try adding dummy expense, invoice, project etc. Anyway, I was told issue was escalated to engineering and "manager" will call me.

As good as product QB is, customer service and knowledge of people answering the phone has been huge issue for me since I started using it 4 years ago. On top of that now we have representatives here answering here "just to answer" unrelated solutions. Extremely frustrated and asked many people what is the replacement of QB.

Solution is here!!!

5 phone calls and many internet search. Solution came from QB but this time those hard to get knowledgeable  customer support person. Roj E called me from QB and she did investigation before calling me. Solution is simple just go to your project tab and on the right side drop down menu if not showing PAYROLL EXPENSES click to that. all the expenses under Payroll Expenses will show up. Only issue is if your expenses are classified as Hourly Cost than you have to go to Project Reports.

customize the report and click cash. 

Amper, thanks for posting this and sorry for opening an old thread, couldn't find anything more recent.

I'm still having issues with how expenses are shown on the project summary page and in project profitability reports. When choosing the 'Hourly Costs' option I get all expenses related to employee time and some other expenses (like printing costs that we pass through to our clients), and when I choose the 'Payroll Expenses' option the employee time entries disappear and everything else pops on, but there is some duplication of expenses (for example, the printing costs mentioned earlier).

Is there no way to simply turn all expenses on? As it stands in order to accurately track project profitability I have to run two separate summaries/reports, filter out the duplicate expense entries, then manually calculate my profit percentage. Really defeats the purpose of being able to track all of this stuff right in quickbooks and makes me want to explore other software options tbh.

Maybe I'm just missing the right workaround to be able to track these things how I want? Thanks in advance to anyone who can provide any insight!

I recognize the need to be able to track expenses on project profitability reports, Skilform.

Currently, running both expenses in one profitability frame is unavailable in QuickBooks Online. Since these expenses have different reporting basis, tracking employee hourly costs are made from the Project section to ensure real-time recording of fixed working hours of an employee, and Payroll expenses are your total costs and will reflect on your projects after running payroll. Thus, we'll need to run these reports separately to verify the accuracy of the information entered.

That said, I recommend sending this idea to our product developers. They're always open to suggestions to help improve our products and may consider having this option in future product enhancements. Here's how to submit feedback:

1. Go to the Gear icon and select Feedback.
2. Enter your product suggestions or feedback.
3. Then, click Next to submit feedback.

Furthermore, I've added this reference to help you handle and track costs on your projects: Create and manage projects in QuickBooks Online. It also entails insights on how to review time costs by employees or vendors regularly.

 We're still ready to back you up if you require additional assistance managing employee costs and projects, Skillform. Keep us posted in the comments below, and we'll ensure to assist you further. Have a good one!