@RRPIKW
It's obvious from the responses you've received from QB employees, they don't know how to handle this and are sending you on a wild goose chase.
The payments you receive from your neighbors are not income, they are a reduction in the receivable (asset) that they owe you. There are a number of ways to handle this. If you don't need to create invoices for your neighbors (maybe they just want a copy of the water bill?), use an Expense transaction (New > Expense). When you receive and pay the water bill, enter an Expense transaction. On line 1, enter your portion of the expense. On lines 2 & 3, enter A/R as the Category, the amount due from each neighbor, and choose each neighbor under 'Customer' (you will need to set up each neighbor as a customer). Each expense transaction will book your portion of the water expense and book the amount due from your neighbors as a receivable. When you receive payment from your neighbors, receive payment as you would on any other invoice. Ideally, you would use a bill transaction in QBO to record this, but QBO does not allow you to use A/R as a category on a bill.
If you need to create invoices and bill your customers, let me know. That's a bit more involved.
