How do I prevent the printed invoice from sorting by service date? We sort by the type of work performed.

Hello, patb3.  

Thank you for reaching out to the Community. You might want to turn off the Service date function. This will remove the SERVICE DATE column when creating the invoices. 

Let me show you the steps: 

1. Click the Gear icon in the upper-right corner, and select Account and Settings.
2. Select the Sales tab, and go to the Sales form content section.
3. Remove the check mark in the Service date box.
4. Press Save and Done.

For future reference, you can check out our guide on creating recurring transactions. It includes additional resources in editing and troubleshooting templates. 

Please feel free to post any questions you have below especially with QuickBooks Online navigation. The Community is always here to help you out. Stay safe!

It is a nonsensical QBO suggestion to remove service date as along with the service item the date is a critical requirement for invoices to show when have multiple lines on invoice billing such as labor invoices where dates must be shown for employee billed time. The need is not to remove the date, just to sort the Invoice so that it sorts service item first, then date second ie employee 1-date 1, employee 1-date 2...sub total employee 1...employee 2-date 1, employee 2-date 2. subtotal employee 2....etc on invoice before send.

Or QBO could just leave the printed invoice as-is and not sort it at all. The transactions can be re-arranged on our own.

Removing the date doesn't stop QB from sorting by date anyway.....  You are correct, this makes no sense.  If I wanted it sorted by date, I'd enter the items by date.  At least have a "sort by" selection.

I'm not sure if this will work for you or not.  I work on a bunch of different machines for a customer and group the items by machine.  There is an option to add a subtotal to each group, and this keeps them together.

I found that you can add a subtotal to each group and this will keep them together.