Time in decimal format on printed invoices

I appreciate you for sharing every detail of what you want to achieve today, @IAS. I understand how important and more convenient for you and your business to add or enter the billable hours on to the purchase order. 

I hear your plea about this simple change and I'm taking note of your request to share it with our developers. That way, they can further review about how to add this functionality and consider this matter in the next plan. 

For now, I'm encouraging you to regularly visit our blog to see what's New in QBO. I've also included our QuickBooks Online Help Articles hub in case you need some easy steps for your "How do I?" tasks.

Know that I'm always available here to listen and lend a helping hand, @IAS. Have a great day ahead. 

This "plea" has been made in the Community forums for over 2 years, and there has been absolutely no movement on this simple issue that is absolutely necessary to use QBO for professional services. It is obvious based upon the lack of any activity that QBO does not appreciate the needs of professional services. Unfortunately, we are forced to use another solution, as QBO is completely incapable of meeting our needs.

This is not the impression we wish to leave you with, @dnykanen. 

As mentioned by my colleague katherinejoyceO, we have submitted feedback to our product developers, so this can be considered in a future update. I appreciate you sharing your concerns with us, and I'll be sure to submit them also. 

Please don't hesitate to let us know if there is anything else that we could assist you with. We are to help you every step of the way. It's our goal to get you back to business. Take care!

Is there any transparency in this process? How can we as the user know when/if this is going to be fixed? Is there an issue tracker?

Hello there, @JMarner.

Yes, you can check out the QuickBooks Blog website to see the product enhancements.

As a workaround, you can enter 1 under the Quantity column. Then, input the billable time and the cost per hour under the Description column and manually put the calculated total cost under the Amount column. This is how it should look like:

I've added this reference page in case you have "How do I"  questions with QuickBooks Online: Self-Help Articles.

I'll be here if you have other questions regarding QuickBooks. Let me know in the comment section below and I'd be happy to back you up. Take care.

Hi All, 

This is also and issue when manually adding hours onto an invoice though QBO in addition to hours that have been imported from T-Sheets. In printed /PDF versions of the invoice the manually added hours appear in decimal format and the T-Sheets hours appear HH:MM. So, the result is an invoice in which the numbers format is not cohesive in appearance. Thank you for offering a work around  @MarsStephanieL , they are always appreciated,  but this doesn't solve the overall issue.  Frequently, I am asked to add hours to an invoice at the last moment it can go out...

Thank you.

Seriously, we users need this fixed TODAY.  

This is seriously so ridiculous how Intuit are slow to respond and fix simple issues like this. I'm seriously thinking to change my book keeping systems on my 2 company for Wave Accounting or anything else than Intuit.

Intuit needs to fix this.  I feel like the entirety of the fix is changing one line of code.  How does this problem still exist?

Half a year later...still no fix??? Come on already.

Add me to the list of people who need this fix.  I bill clients based on 1/10 of an hour increments.  Why would I send an invoice based in minutes?  Quickbooks told me I needed to stop using the Desktop version (which allows billing in decimals) and start using online.  They promised an easy transition.  But now I need to manually create invoices because I cannot send invoices that do not correspond to the billing arrangement I have with clients.  COME ON!  FIX THIS!

Hello there, @Thayer2.

I'll help share a few insights about the billable time entry format on printed invoices in QuickBooks Online (QBO). Then, guide you in sending product recommendations to help improve the features of our products and be added to the list of users that needs this specific option.

For the time being, you can set up the time in HH:MM format on fields that require hours, such as timesheets and paychecks in QBO. However, for invoices, the available column is Quantity. That's why when you add time, QuickBooks automatically converts it to decimals.

On the other hand, I can see how the benefit of being able to use and print billable entries in HH:MM format on invoices would aid you in managing your transactions with QBO. With this, I would encourage you to send suggestions or product recommendations. We take your suggestions as opportunities to improve the various features of our products.

Your valuable feedback will be forwarded and reviewed by our Product Development team to help improve your experience while using the program. 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, you may want to check out one of our Help pages as your reference in managing your customers, invoicing, payments, and handling sales transactions using QBO: Customers and income help articles for 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.

Let me know if you have other feature concerns or questions about managing invoices and sales transactions in QBO. Please don't hesitate to drop a comment below, and I'll gladly help. Take care, and I wish you continued success, Thayer2.

@Rea_M 

I have probably submitted this with many other people a couple dozen times over the course of the last 3 years. The suggestions feedback system seems to just go right in the trash bin at QuickBooks. 

“On the other hand, I can see how the benefit of being able to use and print billable entries in HH:MM format on invoices”

I think you are misunderstanding the problem. The time DOES print on the invoice in HH:MM. this is absolutely useless to literally everyone in the world. The time shows in decimal when editing the invoice line item but then changes to HH:MM when printed/emailed. 

I am 100% this is a bug/glitch but QuickBooks will not fix it. On the desktop version as @Thayer2 @stated, you can select that you want it printed out in decimal but the option does not exist for online version. I spend about 4 hours a week manually creating emails a week losing ~$1000  a month in my time having to do this task instead of it being and automated task. 

ps, how much would it cost for me to just pay one of your programmers to finally just fix this!? 

I have several clients that bill time and materials that this affects. Not sure why this would be a feature in Desktop that doesn't transfer to Online. It is very unfortunate that we now have to explain our Invoices to Clients as this isn't something the average person would understand. So disappointing.

Hi Rolyank,

Thank you for sharing your sentiment about the time format on invoices. I see how much it can help if the decimal format is displayed on the customer-facing form. Please feel free to send your suggestion to let our engineers know that you also need this.

On the other hand, you can consider adding the decimal equivalent in the description of each line item, like what Stephanie suggested above. You can also do some customizations if you want to change the look of your sales forms.

Please don't hesitate to reply if you have any other concerns about invoicing. Take care and have a good one.

Have there been anymore updates on this since Feb 10th 2020?

Thank you

I appreciate you for getting back here in the thread, @IAS.

Before anything, I recognize the importance of having this feature work in your QuickBooks Online company. As I check here on my end, the feature you're trying to access in QuickBooks Online (QBO) is still unavailable. Please know that due to high volumes of feature suggestions. Our engineers might still haven't reviewed your feedback. With that said, I recommend resending a feature request to our Product Development Team. To begin, here's how:

1. Access your QuickBooks Online company.
2. On the top right corner, click the Gear icon.
3. Under Profile column, select Feedback.
4. Enter a brief description of your request, and then click Next.

Additionally, I've got you these articles to help you manage your invoices in QBO:

•  Customize invoices, estimates, and sales receipts in QuickBooks Online.
• Invoice customers for project expenses in QuickBooks Online.

@IAS, if you have any additional QuickBooks-related concerns or need help performing specific tasks in QuickBooks. Feel free to post here in the Community space. I'll be here, and I'll help you. Take care.

January 2023 - Issue still not fixed.  I guess the engineers don't give a darn about us!!!!!  I have to print to pdf to change the number format.  Ridiculous for the hundreds of invoices I send out!

What about when I'm NOT entering time, just a quantity.  I've never entered time, yet the printed invoice still shows 12:00.  It only affects a couple of line items though, and I can't figure out why.  See line 1 on attached invoice.

Count me as another customer that really wants this feature!

Our customers have repeatedly become confused by the HH:MM format, confusing 39:30 with 39.3 hours instead of 39.5 hours. It's way more intuitive for this to be a decimal format. 

It really is disappointing that Intuit, one of the largest software providers in the world, doesn't actually prioritize feedback from its users and has failed to provide a solution for over 4 years on this issues. 

Apparently QuickBooks believes that sending me occasional e-mails giving me "Kudos" for expressing my frustration with Quickbooks or congratulating me because someone liked my comment is a substitute for fixing this problem. 

Not helpful!  Fix the problem!

This workaround is completely not feasible. My organization has multiple employees clocking time for clients, and a typical invoice has hundreds of lines of time entries. 

Will quickbooks pay for a bookkeeper to manually change each of these hundreds of rows on every invoice? Because I don't have that kind of time. 

Add another one to this list of wanting the change. 

We group the hours by items and then send a copy of the detailed time sheet from QB Time and ones in decimal and invoiced in HH:MM so Customers always come back saying it doesn't match. 

Hope they fix this soon. 

This issue had been pointed out for over four years. Intuit obviously doesn't care enough about its customers to fix it.