QuickBooks Online projects: how to keep them when you switch

What a project is in QuickBooks Online

Projects are a QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced feature (and Intuit Enterprise Suite). Each project belongs to one customer and gathers that customer's invoices, estimates and costs for one job, so you can see whether the job made money. Intuit describes a project, like a sub-customer, as linked to a customer.

That last part is the key to moving them. Underneath, a project behaves like a customer under a customer. In QuickBooks Online's reports it appears as Customer:Project, for example Harbour Dental:Second floor fit-out. QuickBooks Desktop called the same thing a job, written Customer:Job.

Where projects show up in the exports

There's no "projects file" you need to hunt for. In the exports we have seen, the customer list leaves projects out or lists them as plain customers with no parent. The reports are where projects keep their place:

• A/R Aging Detail lists each open invoice under Customer:Project. Run it as of the day before your switch date.
• The Journal names the project on each invoice, payment and credit memo line.
• Sales by Customer Detail groups sales under the customer, with the project beneath.
• Estimates by Customer shows estimates for each project.

So the advice is simple: export the reports with the projects in them, not just the lists. Our export checklist has the full set.

The tricky part: payments on the customer

Customers don't pay by project. A builder sends one cheque for two jobs, and someone in your office records it on the customer, applying it to invoices on both projects. QuickBooks Online knows which invoices that payment paid. Its exports don't say. The Journal shows the payment and the invoices separately, with no link.

Any program you move to has to work out the link. Done carelessly, two things go wrong:

• The payment sits on the customer as an unapplied credit, while the project invoices still look unpaid. The customer's total is right; each project's balance is wrong, and project aging is nonsense.
• The project becomes a separate top-level customer, so its invoices and the customer's payment never meet.

How AcboBooks brings projects across

The QuickBooks Online importer in AcboBooks (Company → Import from QuickBooks) handles both problems. Since version 0.2.10 it works like this:

• Projects stay under their customer. Every Customer:Project name in the reports becomes a project under that customer. If the customer list had the project as a plain customer, it is moved under its customer rather than added twice. A report that names a project by its own name alone is matched to the one Customer:Project it belongs to.
• Customer payments reach the projects' invoices. A payment or credit memo on the customer is applied to the customer's own invoices and its projects' invoices: first to an invoice it settles exactly, then to the oldest. Every invoice ends with the open balance the aging report shows for it.
• Open invoices stay on their project. Invoices still open on your switch date are re-created on the right project, from A/R Aging Detail.

In AcboBooks itself, projects work the way you'd expect after QuickBooks Online. Receive Payment on a customer lists its projects' open invoices too, and Auto Apply reaches them. The Customer Hub, customer statements, A/R aging, Open Invoices and Sales by Customer show the customer with its projects under it and a customer total. The Project Hub, Project Profitability and the other project reports cover income and costs by job. If you add projects later from a spreadsheet, Lists → Import from Excel or CSV accepts names written Customer:Project.

We built and tested this on a real Canadian company's QuickBooks Online files, projects included. It is still worth checking your own.

Checking projects after the move

1. Customer totals. Compare A/R Aging Summary in both programs on your switch date. Each customer's total, projects included, should match to the cent.
2. Open projects. Compare A/R Aging Detail for the customers with open work. Projects with open invoices on that date should match invoice by invoice.
3. Project income. Run a project profitability report in both for the same period. Income should agree.
4. Past balances by project may differ where a customer paid several projects at once, because the link was worked out from amounts. The customer total never differs. If a past split matters, for example for a dispute, the QuickBooks Online export is your record.

What doesn't come with them

Be clear-eyed about the rest:

• Estimates come across with their totals only. QuickBooks Online's estimate report has no item lines.
• Costs by project. Bills, expenses and paychecks come across with their accounts and amounts. Compare project costs in the two programs, and tag any cost lines in AcboBooks that didn't carry their project.
• Time entries aren't one of the files AcboBooks reads. Hours already billed are on the invoices; unbilled hours need entering again.
• Project status, notes and budgets on the QuickBooks Online projects screen don't export. Note them down for active jobs.

QuickBooks® is a registered trademark of Intuit Inc. AcboBooks is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Intuit.

Frequently asked questions