Is it possible to have QBO use the Invoice Line's Service Date as the date to recognize revenue instead of the Invoice Date?

It's nice to see you here in Community, @chadwixk. Allow me to provide some insights about customizing your reports.

Currently, we're unable to run the Profit and Loss Detail report that shows the service dates.

To view your weekly revenue changes using the Service Date column, you can customize the Sales by Product/Service Detail report. Here's how:

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

In addition, you can read the following articles to help you improve the reporting process and make the most of QuickBooks' financial reporting capabilities:

• Customizing reports

• Popular custom reports

• Export reports, lists, and other data from QuickBooks Online
  
  

Stay in touch if you have other questions or concerns. I'd be glad to help. Thanks for visiting us today.

@Kevin_C your answer does not apply to my question. I know how to add the Service Date to the Invoice. My questions is if QBO can use THAT date, INSTEAD of the Invoice Date in accrual based reports.

Thank you for your prompt reply, @chadwixk. Let me clarify some information about the service date in QuickBooks Online.

As stated above, we're unable to run the Profit and Loss Detail report that shows the service dates right now. I recommend submitting your feedback and suggestions to our Product Development Team so they can add this feature in the future. Here's how:

1. Go to the Gear icon.
2. Select Feedback under Profile tab.
3. Enter your comments, suggestions, then click Next.
   
   

Keep on posting if you need more assistance. I'll always be here to help you. Take care and have a great day!

Is there any update on this after a year?  Including Service Date WITHOUT making it the revenue recognition date, and without allowing it to be displayed in reports or as a filter, and without the ability to use that date to add charges to invoices is simply accounting malpractice.  I'm in the middle of hours of rework to repair all the charges I posted using a service date only to find out that it's a dead end field with no use at all anywhere in the app.  Don't tell me that "you can print it on invoices" if you can't make it the actual record date by which we attempt to stay in compliance with GAAP.  Now that I know Service Date is a sham, and now that I need to go back and repost hundreds of charges faking out the Delayed Charge Date to be the actual service date for GAAP, I'm afraid what will happen if I turn off Service Date in my settings.  I expect to crash my company and get fired, at this rate.

Is there any update here? Our company invoice dates vary, but revenue should be recognized on the service date for proper GAAP accrual accounting. We need to be able to recognize revenue based on service date for it to be accurate. 

At this time, the option to run a Profit and Loss Detail report to show service dates is still unavailable, @maggienix. 

For now, I recommend using the steps provided by my colleague, Kevin_C, as a workaround. In the meantime, I've gone ahead and sent this suggestion on through to our Product Development Team. This way, our developers can consider the feedback for a future update. 

We will be sure to keep you updated as updates become available. 

Don't hesitate to let me know if you have any other questions or concerns. Take care!

The feedback the dev team needs really isn't about running reports.  It's about how the Service Date needs to be the actual posting date on which revenue is recognized.  The lack of functionality really isn't in the software realm, it's in the understanding how accounting actually works realm.  If they can't use the Service Date as a revenue recognition date, the software team feedback should be to mask off the Service Date feature altogether, because to provide the Service Date feature absent it being the record date for charges, you're representing that your app does something that it doesn't do.  The faster solution would be to mask off Service Date and change the label in the app called Delayed Charge Date to be Posting Date so users accurately understand what the app does and doesn't do.

B2BDNA

Having the same issue here. Super new to the platform. Would you mind explaining why you don't change the "Invoice date" on the invoice manually to the date that the service was rendered so that revenue won't be recognized until that date?

I see that if you change the "Invoice date" when looking at the invoice, it will make sense for the revenue/expenses/profitability, and I still have the ability to see my cash flow correctly and see when the payments were specifically made on the invoice itself.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

B2BDNA

Having the same issue here. Super new to the platform. Would you mind explaining why you don't change the "Invoice date" on the invoice manually to the date that the service was rendered so that revenue won't be recognized until that date?

I see that if you change the "Invoice date" when looking at the invoice, it will make sense for the revenue/expenses/profitability, and I still have the ability to see my cash flow correctly and see when the payments were specifically made on the invoice itself.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

In my case, think of country club billing.  Members incur charges daily.  Sometimes the charges get entered right away.  Sometimes the charges get entered at the end of the month when we collect honor bar logs, etc.  What would be ideal is that the date the member charged something was the Service Date and the date we entered the charge the "Posting" date.  But members only get billed monthly for ALL their charges that month, so we have a many-to-one relationship between charges and invoices.  (In my case, it's worse.  We only bill quarterly but want to recognize revenue monthly.  So I have to create three "invoices" each quarter as that triggers when the posted charge actually becomes revenue in QBO.  Then I send a statement representing three months invoices.)  If the Service Date was available as a filter for adding posted charges to invoices, this would all work.  But they only present charges by Posting date (what they call Delayed Charge Date) which means you can't tell which services to drop into which month's invoice when you're billing so far in arrears.  I have simply solved the problem by ignoring Service Date.  I would turn if back off in Settings if i trusted it not to wreck my data, which I don't.  Now I simply change the Delayed Charge Date to be the actual date of service when I post charges, and everything works.  Hope this helps.

Thank you for joining this thread, MrBrown95.

I'm here to share some details about how to hold a transaction so it won't affect your accounts until  the service is rendered.

QuickBooks Online uses the Invoice date as the posting date. As a workaround, you can create an estimate since it's a non-posting transaction. It doesn't affect any financial reports or income and expense balances. Here's how:

1. Click + New, then Estimate
2. Select your customer.
3. Fill out the rest of the estimate.
4. Hit Save and new, Save and close, or Save and send.

Once the work is complete, convert the estimate to an invoice. This process is called "Progress Invoicing" in QuickBooks. This article provides instructions and detailed steps: Learn how to send invoices over time as you work off an estimate in QuickBooks.

I'm adding these resources as future guidance in recording payments and matching bank transactions.

• Record invoice payments in QuickBooks Online
• Categorize and match online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online.

If you have any other questions, feel free to leave a reply below. I'm always happy to help. Have a great rest of your day. 

I just want to add my voice to the mix.  I would like revenue to be recognized based on service date for accrual accounting purposes, not sales receipt date.  This is not a reports issue in Quickbooks.  Just hoping you will pass on this suggestion to dev team.  Thank you.  

I hear you, @steveatliftinghands.

Let's send feedback or product recommendations to help improve the features and your experience in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

I can see how the benefit of being able to recognize revenue based on service date for accrual accounting purposes would aid you in managing your income transactions in QBO. With this, I would encourage you to send suggestions or product recommendations. We'll take them as opportunities to improve the various features of our products.

Here's how:

1. Go to the Gear icon.
2. Select Feedback.
3. Type in your recommendation in the Share your feedback field.
4. Click Next.
5. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process. 

Also, there are a variety of ways you can view a snapshot of your business finances in QuickBooks. You may want to check out this article on how to do this in QBO: Get a snapshot of your business finances in QuickBooks Online.

On top of that, I'd also recommend visiting this page to keep you updated with the latest software improvements and enhancements with QBO: Customer Feedback for QuickBooks Online.

Please feel free to leave a comment below if you have other feature concerns or questions about managing transactions in QBO. I'm always ready to help. Take care, @steveatliftinghands.

Excuse me but this is not scratching where the itch is.

Please go back to your inhouse experts and address the issue directly: most of us now are using QBO as our accrual accounting system for very sophisticated large middle market companies. We are not Mom and Pop shops who used to use Quicken.

Instruct your developers to create a posting date independant of invoice date.  That is the solution almost all of us on this thread are requesting.

Please give us a straight answer,  Where is QB on developing this?  They must be working on it or at least can give a compelling reason why the official response is that creating this hard code change in QB will never happen.

Thank you

Ribrownjr

Hello, @ribrownjr.

I know that this has been a challenge on your end. As much as I want to help you fix this. Let me share some details about the submitted feedback from QuickBooks Online users.

We've received some valuable feedback from our customers regarding the QuickBooks Online application. You can find all the submitted feedback from our users as well as the latest updates on our progress on our Customer Feedback page.

Additionally, you can also share your feedback with our developer team to help them implement changes in the upcoming releases.

Let me know if you have questions about the updates and feedback of QuickBooks Online. I'll be here to lend a helping hand.

Does this work with all versions of QB Online?

I appreciate you joining this thread with your query, Dawn.

I understand the convenience of keeping track of business revenues based on service dates when managing customer sales transactions in your account. Please know that due to high volumes of feature requests. Our engineers might still not have reviewed this feedback.

However, you may consider utilizing the revenue recognition feature if you're using the QuickBooks Online Advanced version to automatically recognize income consistently over time. It also helps you record based on the invoice's service date. You can learn more about it through this guide: Set up a revenue recognition schedule in QuickBooks Online Advanced.

In the meantime, I'd still recommend sending this relevant feature request to our product engineers. This way, they'll consider this idea and will work on its progress to include it in future product updates. Here's how:

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'm adding these references to guide you track things you buy and sell, and receive invoices paid from your customers:

• Use reports to see your sales and inventory status.
• Record invoice payments in QuickBooks Online.

We're still all ears if there's anything else you need further assistance with when managing sales transactions in your file. Feel free to let me know in this post, and I'll make sure to provide additional help. Keep safe and have a good one.