Accounting for construction projects

Allow me to share a few information about exporting the transactions and running reports and guide you on the best thing to do, Elena StClair.

An invoice is a time-stamped commercial document that itemizes and records a transaction between a buyer and a seller. If goods or services were purchased on credit, the invoice usually specifies the terms of the deal and provides information on the available methods of payment. If you're tracking an expense, you'll want to use bills instead.

Also, you can use the projects feature to track different projects of the same customer. Please know that this is available in QuickBooks Online Plus, Advanced, and Accountant. Apart from this, when running reports, since you're already exporting them to excel, you can consolidate them into one report on the Excel file so you can easily compare the information. This way, it would show all the total expenses, money received and the total budget of a project.

To make sure that everything is organized on your customers' and vendors' transactions, you can use classes. Please go through this article for your guide: Create And Manage Classes in QuickBooks Online. 

Reach out to us if you have any concerns about tracking your expense. I'll be right here to help you.

@Elena StClair  

Are you using QB Online Global version for Costa Rica or QB Online US version?

Consider having a construction management app to integrate with your QB Online account.

Should I track everything as a bill or an expense?   Is there anyway to convert the invoices i´ve created into bills?

Thanks for coming back, @Elena StClair. The option to convert an invoice into a bill is currently unavailable. To ensure that the entries are properly tracked, you'll need to create two different transactions.

Additionally, we enter Bill if the transaction is to be paid at a later time. If it's to be paid immediately, we create a Check or Expense. 

Read through this article for more insights about the difference between bills, checks, and expenses in QuickBooks Online.

Check out this post to know more about recording billable expenses in QuickBooks Online for future reference.

Come back here if you have any further questions. I'll be here to assist you immediately.

Thank you so much for your help.  My problem with creating a Bill or expense is that I have multiple customers I am tracking budgets for.   So when I create a bill and input a an expense, for example: 4 hours of backhoe work for my customer John Smith.   Now when I go to my customers section of quickbooks to see my total of expenses for John Smith I only find invoices. 

Thanks for coming back here, Elena StClair.

I'll share some steps to help with your situation.

When you create an expense or bill, make sure to select the Billable option. This process will create a Billable Expense, which you can use to create an invoice for your customer.

If you don't see the Billable column in your Bill or Expense, let's enable the feature by following these steps: 

1. Go to the Gear > Account and Settings. 
2. On the left panel, select the Expenses tab.
3. From the Bills and expenses section, put a check mark on the Show Items table on expense and purchase forms, Track expenses and items by customer, and Make expenses and items billable boxes. 
4. Click Save.

Once done, open the expense or bill and put a check mark on the Billable box. Here are some sample screenshots to see what the transactions would look like:

After the steps, you can run reports like Project Profitability (to see how much you're making or losing) or, Transaction List by Customer (to see all transactions (income and expenses), grouped by customer.)

I'd also like to re-share the articles provided above for reference, as well as guides for the different reports and how to customize them:

• Set up and create projects in QuickBooks Online
• Enter billable expenses
• Reports included in your QuickBooks Online subscription
• Customize reports in QuickBooks Online

Please feel free to reach out to us again if there's anything else you need. We're always around to help. Have a good day ahead.