Customize A/P Report to include Customer:Job

Welcome to the QuickBooks Community, @Loocie.

QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT), helps you generate the report your business needs. To run a report which shows the job allocated to the bill you've created, you can pull up the Custom Transaction Detail Report. To get started, please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Reports tab and hover over Custom Reports.
2. Choose Transaction Detail. 
3. When the report is open, click the Customize Report button.
4. Go to the Display tab.
5. From the Columns field, check Name (so you'll know the specific job and vendor assigned to a bill) and Source Name (this will let you know the vendor's name where the customer job is associated). 
6. You can also add other columns and filters you need.
7. Then, select OK. 

Once done, you'll report will be like this:

To know more about the process, check out this article: Understand reports.

Also, QBDT makes it easy to save your report customization so you'll be able to use it in the future. To do so, simply click the Memorize button in the reports window. 

If there is anything else I can do to help you in running a vendor report, please post a response below. I'm always available to help in case you need it. Have a good one.

I appreciate the reply, but that's not what I was looking for.  Let me give you an example:

Let's say I'm looking at a specific vendor in the Vendor Center, and under Reports for this Vendor, I select Open Balance.   I get a report with all open invoices for this vendor.  But I want to see which job each of these invoices belongs to.  If I select Name and Source Name under Customize Report>Display, the vendor's name shows up in each column.  I already know that it's for that vendor because I selected Open Balance for that vendor.  And I'm not looking for all the transactions - I just need to know which job each invoice goes to.  But I don't have the option to select Customer>Job, and the Name and Source Name columns don't provide the correct info.

Your report appears to give me a list of every transaction during a period of time.  I understand that I can customize and memorize, etc.  But that's a lot of changes to have to make.  It just seems to me that providing the ability to select Customer>Job in the column list and/or filter list makes more sense.  Or better yet, why not make it the default, at least in the Contractor's Edition?  I can't be the only one that would find that info extremely helpful.  

In any case, thanks for your reply.

Let me help you get around your concern, Loocie. 

We're unable to pull up a specific report that shows both details that you need. You'll want to pull up two reports instead. 

For the vendor side, you can continue to pull up the open balance report. Then, pull up a sales report so see the invoice. Here's how:

1. Click Reports.
2. Go to Sales.
3. Select Sales by Customer Detail.

You may want to export the said reports and combine them as one. Click Excel, then select Create New Worksheet. 

Feel free to visit us if you have other concerns. We're around to help you. Take care!

Thanks for the reply.  Unfortunately, it's not efficient to have to create two reports just to get one result.  I understand that it's not possible to do this, but that's my point.  I don't understand why it isn't possible.  I can't believe that this wouldn't be extremely useful for others, for contractors and possibly other industries (I couldn't say).  I just want to be able to include the Customer:Job on a vendor balance report because I included that information when I posted the bill. 

I disagree that QB has "fully customizable reports" - what it should say is "partially customizable reports" instead.  I can add a bunch of irrelevant employee related columns to a Vendor Open Balance report (but there would be no data reported in those columns), but I can't add a relevant column that actually makes sense.

Thanks again for your reply.

Thanks for getting back to us, @Loocie.

I can see how having the specific report you're looking for would be helpful for you, and I'll take note of this. Our Product Engineers are always looking for ideas to consider on how to improve QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT). You may consider following the steps shared by my colleagues above as a workaround.

In the meantime, I recommend visiting our Blog site. This is where we share recent happenings and future developments, such as updates to newly added features. Here's the link: https://www.firmofthefuture.com/product-industry-news/product-updates/.

For more information about managing and customizing reports in QBDT, consider checking out this article for future reference: Customize reports in QuickBooks Desktop.

Don't hesitate to post again or leave a comment below if you have any additional concerns or questions. I'm always here to assist. Have a good one!

I have had this SAME Problem! Fortunately I found something that works. 

So you run a report under Accountant & Taxes > Transaction Detail by Account. This brings up every single transaction in your chart of accounts. 

Then you do some tricky filtering to get this massive report to a user friendly size. In my case, I wanted only transactions that have a customer:job (which are essentially all my COGS accounts.) So I filtered it to display "Multiple Accounts" and checked off only those COGS accounts. (You can check off whatever accounts you put Customer:Job Transactions)

Then I changed the "Total By" at the top from "Account List" to "Vendor". LUCKILY, in this report, when a transaction has a Customer:Job on it, it populates that under "Name" instead of the Vendor Name. Lastly I set my date range to "ALL" and BOOM! I can see all transactions for a vender that shows the Job Name. 

Hope this helps!! <3

HI VictoriaN,

Thanks for the workaround!  It's good to know that there is an option that's better than what I've been doing, which is running the balance report, then from the results, opening each invoice to see which job it goes to and then writing it in by hand on the printed Open Balance report.  Too time consuming.  Try explaining to the boss (who, in my case, is technologically challenged and doesn't even understand how email works) why a simple report will take 30 minutes to generate in the software that I am required to upgrade every couple of years for several hundred dollars.   

While I do appreciate your workaround, I just find it insane that I can't just add the column to the report.  Two clicks and enter would be all that it would take to get what I need.  It is just mind boggling that I can't add a column that is on the New Bill screen when I entered the bill, but I can add a column about payroll that isn't even relevant to a vendor invoice.  To me, that's not "Fully Customizable Reports".  

I've complained enough, I guess.  Thanks again for the reply.

I know I am late to the party but I took the advice regarding the Transaction Detail report and filtered it down to include Paid Status (Open) and Due Date and this gave me the report that I need and you were describing.  Note I also filtered it to only show Bill and Credit Memo (this eliminated all of the Credit Card charges that filled the report and I handle differently).

When I run this "memorized" report it shows me all the open invoices for all my vendors sorted by vendor (as recommended previously) and it does list all of the job names as well.

To your point this seems like it would have been much easier for Quickbooks to figure out than me but I now have a useful A/P report.

Hope this helps (if you get the message lol).

Hi Loocie and Victoria

Having the same issue and tearing my hair out so keep complaining please!!

Hi there, @Elizabeth311. 

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. I sincerely understand how inconvenient this is for you. 

The option to pull up a specific report that shows both details you need isn't available in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT). I can see how this functionality would be beneficial to your business. I encourage sending feedback directly to our Product Development team. This helps us improve the features of the program. I'll show you how:  

1. Go to Help at the top menu bar.
2. Choose Send Feedback Online.
3. Select Product Suggestion.
4. Enter your product request/product suggestion.
5. Click Send Feedback tab.

I'm also adding this article for future reference in customizing reports in QuickBooks Desktop: Customize reports in QuickBooks Desktop. You can add some details you need to show in your report.

Let me know if you have additional questions about managing your reports. I'm always here to help.

I agree. The fact that Quickbooks itself gave us the column for Customer:job on each bill we enter, so we used that immediately as what we thought was a good way to be able to find invoices by Customer:job for a specific vendor, search a vendor to see which jobs we owe money for, etc etc. 

Instead this information is like a hidden, barely usable data field. I can filter reports by the most arbitrary, non-usable information like Routing number or Payroll Status, but finding this one field that they explicity added to EACH BILL, is almost impossible. It's mind boggling. 

I wish we never used this field and just put the info in the memo field so we can see it in a simple open balance report. Who thought giving us this info on each bill you enter, then locking it away like its some arbitrary unneeded data was a good idea? They really screwed over a lot of people and wasted a lot of time. 

I understand your frustration, hard to pay bills for a certain job when we receive payment when you cant get a report for it. Quickbooks should of had this figured out by now.. Very frustration for the amount of money we have to pay each year for it.