Thank you for getting back to us, @Mellane.

I'd suggest reaching out to our Customer Support team to help you further in clearing out those line items from your report. They can get into your account in a secure environment and help you resolve it. 

You can follow the steps below on how to reach them:

1. From your QuickBooks Desktop account, click the Help menu at the top.  
2. Click the QuickBooks Desktop Help menu and select QuickBooks Desktop Help.
3. Provide some information about this concern on the search box.
4. Click the Contact Us link at the bottom of the window. 
5. You'll now be provided with a few support options.  
6. Select Get a call to arrange a callback from a support agent. Or Start a chat to chat with them directly.  

Here's the contact QuickBooks Desktop support article for more information about this.

You can also refer to the following article for more information on how to customize customer, job, and sales reports in QuickBooks Desktop.

I'm always here if you have any other concerns with your account. Take care and have a great rest of the day!

We have this same problem and it is infuriating.  As a contractor we rely heavily on the job costing features of Quickbooks.  We can't remove the job on their paycheck or it messes with reporting.  What I can't figure out it why only the work comp is coming up in the unbilled cost report, but their other payroll items are not coming through.  They're showing up on labor entries that are purposely NOT marked as billable.  I cannot find a way around this, and it seems counterintuitive to be having to hide them.  Please fix this!

Hello, @QFP.

I understand the impact of any inaccurate information in your job costing. Let me share some information to help you resolve this.

It's possible that you have assign a customer or job's name on your employee's paychecks. The system automatically tag it as an Unbilled transaction.

You'd want to remove the customer or job's name manually to remove the transaction from your Unbilled Cost by Job report. 

If the issue persists, you can follow these steps:

1. Open the Unbilled Costs report.
2. Double click on each transaction.
3. Click the Paycheck Detail tab once you're routed to the check.
4. Click the Unlock Net Pay button first prior to making changes.
5. Review the payroll information.
6. Click OK to proceed.
7. Change the old WC code to the updated one by clicking the drop-down arrow in the WC Code column.
8. Click OK. 

You can read through this article for more detailed steps: About Workers' Compensation in QuickBooks Desktop.

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have other questions or concerns. I’m here to help and make sure you’re taken care of. Have a good one.

This does not resolve the problem.  Help?

Hi there, QFP

I'm here to help you in handling the unbilled worker’s compensation.

It could be that the job only assigned to the worker's compensation, that's why the other payroll items are showing your Unbilled Cost by Job report. Since you don't want to remove the job on their paychecks, you may need to create an invoice for the unbilled time entries or transactions. Then, change the amount of the item to zero so your customer won't have unpaid balances.

When you're ready, here's how to do it:

1. Select Customers from the top menu bar.
2. Choose Create Invoices.
3. Select the appropriate customer from the Customer:Job drop-down menu.
4. Add the unbilled time or transaction.
5. Set the amount to zero.
6. Click Save & Close

In addition here's an article that you can read to help manage the money you spend and make for each job in QuickBooks Desktop: Tracking job costs.

I'm just a comment away if you need further assistance in completing your other tasks. Stay safe and have a great rest the weekend.

KlentB - You may wish to read up in the thread. The process of creating an invoice to attempt to clear the WC amounts that are populating as unbilled costs does not work.  The WC amounts that post as unbilled costs are the company portion of the tax, and as such, they cannot be assigned to invoices.  

The only way I have been able to stop the WC from posting to the unbilled costs reports is to uncheck the box "track expenses by job" that is in the payroll item set up.  This does not clear past transactions that have posted, but stops future postings. 

I think the main point of this thread is that there is a problem with the coding associated with this particular payroll item.  When I enable the "track expenses by job" for other Company Contribution payroll items, such as Health Insurance Premiums, those DO NOT post to unbilled costs.  Those work correctly. 

The second issue is that there is no way to go back and clear prior amounts that have posted to the unbilled costs reports.  Trying to do that by creating invoices does not work because you cannot select the WC amounts - they don't show up as an option to select. 

For now, I have unchecked that box to track by job/class.  It is not the ideal solution because now all of those costs show us as "Unclassified" in my class reports.  I now export my financials and apply my own cost allocations to reflect costs by class and job.

Changing the WC code is not the issue.  The issue is that the WC (company contribution) is posting to Unbilled Costs. The WC shows up in the Company Summary (in bottom of paycheck) not in the top under Earnings.  

PS - You don't need to unlock a paycheck to change the job info or WC code associated with earnings.  

@Mellane   This is exactly what I am trying to explain to Intuit.  You cannot select the transactions to add to an invoice, in an effort to clear them off the report, because they do not show up in "Choose Billable Time and Expenses".  

We have so many projects and work comp is a cost that needs to hit our reports and be tracked.  If I also deselect the Track Expenses By Job field on the payroll item, it will then not be job costed.  How do you turn around and re-apply those back to the project?  I already have to do SO MANY WORKAROUNDS at month end due to the limitations of Quickbooks for contractors.  I dread having to add in yet another step.  

How did you get the work comp cost to show up when invoicing?  Those transactions will not appear when you select "Add Time/Costs".  They're still on the report, but will not pull up on the invoice option to clear them out of the queue.  It would take years to clear them out one by one and would mess up all of our job costing reports if we removed the work comp cost from their paycheck.  

If you remove the client name manually, how do you job cost the labor?  

@MelTilk 

Have you found a solution for this? We have the same issue with literally thousands of WC transactions.  We cannot remove the WC code from their paycheck or the job from the paycheck, as it will remove the job costing all together.  We also cannot hide the transaction because it does not show up it the "Add Time/Costs" window.

@KlentB @IamjuViel 

I think you need to read up a little more on how job costing works in Quickbooks.  This will not solve the problem.  It will remove the transaction from the paycheck and the report, but then the cost will no longer be job costed, which is the whole purpose of why Quickbooks has that field there in the first place.  

I would advise NOT to do this.  It did not fix this problem and caused a myriad of other issues.  

@IamjuViel   If you remove the customer/job name, then how will the labor be job costed?  Please read up on how job costing works in Quickbooks before giving out advice that is contradicting and unraveling to the job costing feature of Quickbooks.  

I have not found a fix that is not a workaround.  I have spoken to several reps and tried to escalate but have not received any response, update or resolution.  I ended up unchecking the box "track expenses by job" ... I now only track my direct costs by job, and for all indirect costs, which we consider benefits, wc, payroll taxes, etc. I have calculated a load factor (using cost accounting approach) and now manually add that (i.e., I load the wages) when we analyze job profitability and when we calculate profitability for commission purposes.  It is yet another work-around.  

In all honesty, I think it the engineering team can resolve it - someone has to look into the coding to see why this payroll item is being tagged as an Unbilled Cost (when others are not).   

Intuit's only answers are the same over and over:

1) Remove the customer job from the paycheck ==> NOT POSSIBLE INTUIT, WE USE JOB COSTING

2) Create and invoice and unselect the items (remove billable status) ==> NOT POSSIBLE INTUIT, WORKERS COMP DOES NOT SHOW UP AS AN ITEM

There is ONLY ONE WAY I have found works to stop WC from hitting the unbilled costs by job reports:  In the payroll item set-up (go to Edit for the WC payroll item) and UNCHECK the box "Track Expenses By Job."  We only track our direct expense and we use a calculated labor load factor to account for our other costs (insurance, benefits, payroll expenses, payroll taxes, vehicle expenses, etc)

To solve this the engineering team needs to go in and look at the Worker's Compensation payroll item attributes that are coded into the software (recall that WC is set up auto that is set up automatically when WC tracking is enabled). Therein will lie the fix.  And by the way, this happens with some of the Company paid fed and state taxes as well...

I feel your pain.  The workaround are ridiculous.  I have created a load factor for my wages - I review it quarterly and adjust if needed. My load includes quite a few items that cannot be job allocated in QB (see image). Then I run the job costing reports, dump it into excel and then load the wages to get to the true cost of labor. So my final job costing is in Excel, not QB.  It's not ideal, but I can ensure it is as close as I can get it. 

Hi - Don't remove the WC code or Job Number from paychecks. You definitely need those!  I posted a reply above with how I use load factor on my wages to job cost.  What you can do is uncheck the "track expenses by job" box for WC payroll item (edit payroll item). It will no longer split all the WC by job#, but it will stop populating the unbilled costs reports.  Then just make sure to include your Worker's Comp insurance costs in your load calculation.  Then when you apply the load % to your wages for the job, it will be allocated (weighted) correctly.  It is unfortunately a 2 step process - you need to run the job costing in QB and export to Excel, then load your labor.  At least, that's how we do it. :)

I am totally in the same boat and it's beyond frustrating that QuickBooks can't figure this out. 

Just want to +1 this topic....  The out-of-touch "solutions" have been a frustrating waste of time.  My situation falls exactly in line with ALL info/documentation/analysis @Mellane  and @MelTilk have provided.  It doesn't seem like it would be a complicated solution? I wish we could get some traction on a fix.

Clearly none of these people that have posted a so called solution use quickbooks or understand the issue.  None of them come even close to solving the problem.  For jobs that are time and materials, we should be able to bill for WC expense like everything else, but NOWHERE int the add time/expenses tab does this cost pull through.  there is nowhere to edit the WC item to make it billable......

Don't post "solutions" when you don't understand the issue.

Hello, KCLCINC75.

I understand how important it is to be able to edit the WC expense item to make it billable so that you can pass it along and include it on your customers' invoices.

This would be an excellent addition for future product enhancement; please send your product suggestion inside QuickBooks. Our engineers are constantly looking for new ways to improve the product. If this is approved and accepted, it may included in future updates.

Here's how:

1. Go to the Help menu.
2. Select Send Feedback Online, then Product Suggestion.
3. Enter your request.
4. Once done, click Send Feedback.

If you need help tracking Workers Compensation, see this article for more information: Manual Workers' Compensation in QuickBooks Desktop.

In addition, here are the available reports for workers' compensation, along with a description of how to run them in QBDT.

Please let me know if you have further questions about Workers Compensation in QuickBooks. I'll be glad to help you further.

This absolutely is not the correct way to handle this situation, and shows that you do not know the effects on job costing, when you change a transaction in Quickbooks. This very poor advice.