How do I track projects in QuickBooks Online?
QuickBooks Online has a Projects feature that lets you track income, expenses, and time for individual jobs or projects. When set up correctly, you can see profitability by project without pulling numbers from multiple reports and doing the math yourself.
Turn on Projects by going to Settings, then Account and Settings, then the Advanced tab. Look for the Projects section and enable it. Once active, Projects appears in your left navigation menu.
Create a new project by clicking New Project and linking it to a customer. You can have multiple projects per customer. A remodeling company might have separate projects for kitchen renovation and bathroom addition under the same homeowner.
The key step is assigning transactions. When you create an invoice for work on that project, select the project name so the income gets tracked there. When you enter a bill from a supplier or subcontractor, assign it to the project so the expense counts against that job. If you track time in QBO, assign those hours to the project too.
Every assigned transaction appears in the project’s overview tab. You can see what you’ve invoiced, what you’ve spent, and what’s left over. The project profitability report pulls this together and shows your margin.
Consistency makes or breaks project tracking. Every invoice, bill, and expense needs the correct project assignment when you enter it. Skip this step and your profitability numbers become unreliable. That lumber purchase meant for the Smith project ends up floating in general expenses instead of being charged where it belongs.
The Projects feature works well for service businesses tracking straightforward jobs. It shows whether individual projects made or lost money. But it has limits. You cannot track costs by phase, compare budgeted amounts to actuals, or manage committed costs from contracts you have signed but have not paid yet. Construction companies and other project-based businesses often need job costing for contractors that goes beyond what basic project tracking offers.
If you are just getting started with QBO and want project tracking set up correctly from the beginning, working with small business bookkeepers in Northern New Mexico who understand your industry helps avoid the common mistakes that make project data useless later.
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