Invoice date & service date

Hello EkaterinaPiskunS_33,

Currently, we're unable to run the Profit and Loss Detail report that shows the service dates. I'd recommend sending feedback to our Product Development Team by clicking the Gear icon in the upper-right corner and selecting Feedback.

Meanwhile, you can customize the Sales by Product/Service Detail report. You can use this for reference while pulling up Profit and Loss Detail report.

1. Select Reports on the left menu and search Sales by Product/Service Detail.
2. Click the Customize button and go to the Rows/Columns section.
3. Click Change columns and put a check mark in the Service Date box.
4. Click Run report.

I'd also recommend reaching out to your accountant to see if they know other reports that display the data you need.

Feel free to let me know if you need anything else. 

According to accrual account the P&L should reflect the service date not the invoice date???

Hi there, YDK.

I can share some information about how the Profit and Loss (P&L) report works in QuickBooks Online.

Please take note that when you use an accrual basis for your bookkeeping, you record income when you sell or ship an item. You count expenses when you obtain a purchase. The original transaction and the time money changes hands are separate events for accounting purposes.

If you set your P&L report to an accrual basis, it will show all your income regardless of whether your customers have paid your invoices. Additionally, the date that would reflect on this report is the actual date when you created the invoice.

To ensure that the dates on your financial report reflect your real-life business activities, you'll want to issue the invoice right after you provide the service or sell the product.

Additionally, here some articles that you can read to help streamline the reporting process and get the most out of QuickBooks’ financial reporting capabilities:

• Customizing reports
• Memorizing reports

• Popular custom reports

Do you have any other questions in mind? Feel free to leave them below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Thank you for your quick response

But I think that my question still stands. According to accrual accounting you earn the money when the service is rendered not when you create the invoice so the P&L should reflect the service date not the invoice date? 

I create the invoice when the customer orders the service and I get paid before the service is rendered so I enter the invoice date on the date that I send out the invoice and I enter the service date to reflect the date the service is provided. I think the P&L should run according to the service date not the invoice date?

I have seen that another person asked that Quickbooks should fix this.

Thanks for following up with the Community, YDK.
 

As my colleague, KlentB, explained, the date that's shown on an accrual-based profit and loss report is the day when your invoices were created. Additionally, their response provides information about how to ensure reports reflect proper details.
 

If you'd like to submit a product suggestion about our reporting feature in Quickbooks Online, you can do so while signed in.
 

Here's how:
1. Use your Gear (⚙️) icon.
2. Click Feedback.

3. Enter your suggestions and/or comments.
4. Hit Next.
5. Choose Skip and send message.
6. The available drop-down menu can be used to pick an appropriate category.
7. Select Send message.

Your feedback is definitely valuable to Intuit. It goes directly to the Product Development Team and will be considered in future updates. Feature requests can be tracked through our Customer Feedback website.
 

If there's anything else I can help with, please feel more than welcome to reach out anytime. Have a fantastic day!

I have to say, having browsed several Q&A threads on this same issue, since my company is now facing it, and seeing that this shortcoming in QB has been noted for years, it feels incredibly tone deaf to repeat ad nauseam the "here's how to submit feedback" line. Maybe this is the direction from management, but it is not a helpful policy, at all. Users have consistently stated how the workarounds suggested for this problem do not meet their needs, again, for years, with clearly no comprehensive response by QB beyond, "send us your feedback! Again!" And just because this response is no different than most software help forums (I've seen this plenty of times for Microsoft products), it doesn't make the customer feel any less ignored. Please up your game, y'all.

That is exactly what I am thinking

I am having the exact same problem. The work around a I have are time consuming and involve taking numbers from the p&l and numbers from the transaction by service date into an excel spreadsheet. So frustrating. Please fix so we can run an accrual P&L based on service date, not invoice date. 

Hi! Quickbooks should really do something about the service date... But in the meantime, we've spent lot of time thinking about this... Thought about using the 'service date' but it's pretty much useles since it doesn't affect the date of income. So.. I'm in the hospitality business, and normally how we proceed with our clients is the following:
- 50% deposit is made on the booking date (i.e. today)
- 50% 90 days before the booking date.

I sell events very often 1-2 years in advance.

So what we did is that we put the 'Invoice Date' as the date of the wedding (on which the service is rendered, so taxes are perceived and income is actually made), and the 'Due Date' of said invoice as of 90 days in advance. (so that I can see in my cashflow that I have money coming in, etc.). 
For the 1st 50% deposit, we just receive payment separetely and apply such payment on the invoice of the client (which brings the new Balance Due to 50% of the total invoice). 

What happens in QBO is that the payment (made today) is recorded as a negative Account Receivable. At year end, we switch all such negative amounts to a Deferred Income as it's 'cleaner' for analysis purposes..

Any thoughts on this procedure? Really scratched my head, and found it's the easiest for clients, and also.. internally. 

We are nearly 4 years on, are QB any closer sorting the filter??

We recognize that each company has unique needs, and I can see how the feature you're looking for would benefit and empower your business, @LFA1. 

Though we don't have a specific timeframe when this will be made available, rest assured that our latest news and updates, including product improvements, will be posted on this page.

For future help, let me share some resources you can browse and use in managing and navigating your QuickBooks account.

•  Video Tutorials for QuickBooks Online - You can watch videos that can help you perform the most vital features of the program. 
• Small Business Webinars and Trainings - Join our live QuickBooks webinars for more in-depth knowledge on how you can maximize the use of QuickBooks to manage your finances.

Should you need other assistance when working with QuickBooks, let me know. We are always here to help you. 

Yes, I agree. QuickBooks should respoind far more quickly to fix these issues.

So, when will this issue be resolved?

Welcome back to the QuickBooks Community, Stoatmonster. 

Running a Profit and Loss report with the service date displayed in the Revenue section is still unavailable in QuickBooks. We are unable to provide a specific time frame as to when the option will be available. I'll ensure you can send Feedback so your suggestion is forwarded to our Development Team.

Beforehand, please know that all suggestions are being considered by our product engineers based on the volume of requests and their influence on the user interface before they are implemented. I encourage you to send feedback regarding the ability to appear the invoice service date on the P&L report.

Here's how:

1. Click the Gear icon at the top.
2. Choose Feedback.
3. Enter your comments or product suggestions. Then, select Next to submit feedback.

Once done, your recommendations are sent to our engineer for consideration in future updates.

In addition and while waiting for the said feature to be possible in QuickBooks, you can run and customize the Sales by Product/Service Detail report as mentioned above. This way, you may check the service date for each invoice for reference while pulling up the Profit and Loss Detail report.

Lastly, refer to this article if you need help printing, emailing, and exporting different reports in QuickBooks to have a copy of your data: Run reports in QuickBooks Online.

Keep me posted if there's anything else I can help you, 

Stoatmonster. I'll be around whenever you need additional information. Have a great day!

Five years later...

Are there plans to add 'Service Date' as an available filter for Quickbooks Desktop?

It is unbelievable that they fix this problem. What is holding them back? 

Hi there, @wdi.

I understand the importance of having the Service Date as an available filter, which enhances your ability to manage and track transactions more effectively.

At the moment, there's no specific information about plans to introduce this feature in an upcoming release of QuickBooks Desktop. However, I want to assure you that we are continuously working to improve our software and tailor it more closely to the needs of our users.

I highly encourage you to share this feedback directly with our product development team.

Here's how:

1. Select the Gear icon and choose Feedback.
2. Fill in your suggestions in the Feedback field.
3. Select Next to send it.

This feedback goes straight to our product development team for consideration in future updates.

Moreover, you can also learn how to combine reports from multiple company files in QuickBooks Desktop. 

We're committed to making QuickBooks work better for you, and it's through feedback like yours that we can continue to evolve and meet the diverse needs of our user base. We're here for you, and we're listening.

LOL - @MarkAngeloG, you're surely just doing your job and applying the script that your managers have provided for these situations, but good gravy... it was 2.5 years ago that I commented on this thread that this kind of response was all QB could muster to an issue THAT HAS BEEN NOTED FOR YEARS. And it's still going strong!! If the engineers aren't going to work on this, just tell us, honestly. We're not going to toss endless feature requests into the void when clearly it doesn't matter.

@schuney, I'm frustrated as well. It makes sense that Intuit is going to invest resources into the most commonly-requested features, but I'd love to see them focus a dev group on knocking out seemingly 'small' requests from the community forums. They just don't prioritize any of this feedback. I'm not a developer, but for this specific issue, it seems like it would be so easy to add 'Service Date' to the list of filters which already exist... almost like it would just be one more line of code. My guess is they're just focused on QB Online at this point. Again... really frustrating, because having the ability to filter off of 'Service Date' would really make things easier for me. Instead, I have to create a custom field with the same name... which doesn't have the calendar widget to make data entry easier... and then I can't filter that custom field on a date range. @MarkAngeloG, please pass this feedback on. I've already provided feedback through the proper channels.

Work Around for Showing Service Date on P & L Instead of Invoice Date 

For Accrual Revenue Recognition Purposes

• Create an Estimate for your customer as usual. 
• When it's Approved and the Service Date is set, Create a zero amount Invoice for that customer. You can list the products and services that are agreed upon from the estimate, just make sure the amount column is zero. 
• This will set the Date for recognizing the revenue on your Profit & Loss Statement for the actual Date of Service, not the date you get around to sending an invoice or when the client actually pays the invoice.
• Then when the work is completed and you have all the information and amounts for the work, you can go to the Zero Amount Invoice and enter in the cost for the items, plus add any additional products and services that were done until the Invoice shows the correct amount.
• Click Save, or Save and Send. 
• When it asks if you are sure you want to make changes to this, click Yes.
• Done 

You can run your P&L and see that your revenue is now properly recognized as of the date you actually earned it (in this case the service date). Hope this helps.

I realize this is just a Band-Aid solution to a very serious flaw with QuickBooks.

I would much rather see QuickBooks add this as an actual feature / option. You should be able to select whether or not you want to recognize revenue as of service date or invoice date for cash basis vs accrual basis. It really seems like something that should have been available from the start.  

I really hope they add it.

This solution does not work. If you create an Estimate and convert it to an Invoice, it simply takes the estimate date and transfers it to the invoice date. The P&L report isn't using the service date, it just so happens that your invoice date is incorrect. When you send the invoice to the customer you need to update the invoice date to the current date and you will have the same problem again.

This solution does not work. If you create an Estimate and convert it to an Invoice, it simply takes the estimate date and transfers it to the invoice date. The P&L report isn't using the service date, it just so happens that your invoice date is incorrect. When you send the invoice to the customer you need to update the invoice date to the current date and you will have the same problem again.