Quick Start with a Product Expert: Projects with Danae

Hi Community! In preparation for our upcoming AMA event, our expert of the month Danae will be sharing tips when it comes to best navigating Projects in QuickBooks Online. Danae is a Senior Service and Support Expert that has been with Intuit for 6 years. She’s excited to answer all your questions during the Ask Me Anything event this Thursday, October 24th!

So let’s dive into some of the tips and tricks from Danae that you can utilize while tracking your Projects.

Did you know that QuickBooks Online Advanced allows you to compare your income and expenses for project estimates? Let’s learn how you can forecast your project income and costs in QuickBooks Online Advanced. In Advanced, you’re able to compare income and expenses with what you originally estimated for a project, and you can add project estimates and break them down by each product or service you plan to use. With forecasting, you’re also able to share this information with your customer so they know what to expect. And your customer won’t see any detailed information about costs, markup, or profit margin - just the general cost estimate. Let’s dive into how you’ll accomplish this: 

Step #1

Review your settings to make sure you’re set up correctly. It’s important to add products and services to your expense forms. You’ll want to go to Settings > Account and settings > Expenses. Find Bills and Expenses, hit the pencil edit button and make sure “Show Items table on expense and purchase forms” is turned ON. Then hit Save and select Done. You’ll next need to map each of your products and services to an expense account. Here’s how:
Go to Settings > Products and Services. In the ACTION column, select Edit for a product/service. Select the “I purchase this product/service from a vendor” checkbox and choose the Expense account from the dropdown. You’ll repeat these exact steps for every product/service that you want to estimate costs for. 

Step #2

Create project cost estimates that you can share with your customer. Once you’re in Projects, you can select “Add to project” and it will give you the option to create a project estimate. Here you can enter the estimated Qty, cost rate, and sales rate. Quickbooks populates the Markup % automatically but you can edit that as well. Once you’ve filled it out, QuickBooks gives you the total estimated cost, income and an estimated profit margin! 

Step #3

Now that you’ve created a cost estimate, don’t forget to start tracking your sales and expenses for the project as well. If your customer accepts the estimate, you can convert it directly into an invoice to save time. Find the estimate under Transactions and under the More Actions dropdown, you’ll select Convert to Invoice. 

To add bank transactions to your projects and see them in the Estimates vs Actuals report, make sure your bank is connected to QuickBooks to streamline this process. Under Transactions > Bank Transactions, you’ll select the expense and then choose the project you’re assigning it to. 

Step #4

Compare the estimates to the actuals. After completing the previous steps, now when you view your project you’ll see a chart comparison. If you want more details, select Project Reports and then select Estimates vs Actuals. Now it will be broken down by product or service! 

For more in depth details on this topic, check out this article. 

That’s all for today’s Quick Help with an Expert! We hope you found this article helpful when navigating projects in QuickBooks Online. We look forward to hearing from you during tomorrow’s AMA event and get those questions answered! And as always, reach out in the Community anytime! See you next time