QuickBooks Online · Feature
QuickBooks Online Projects: job-level profitability tracking.
Projects is the job-costing feature in QuickBooks Online: turn it on, create a project for a job or engagement, and assign the invoices, expenses, estimates, and billable time that belong to it. From there a single Project dashboard shows income, costs, labor, and profitability for that job in one place — so you know which work actually makes money instead of guessing from the company-wide P&L. Projects is available in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced. Below: what the feature does, how to use project tracking well, and when a ProAdvisor should set it up for you. Independent firm, not affiliated with Intuit Inc.
QuickBooks Online Projects tracks income, costs, labor, and profitability by project or job in one place. Once you turn the feature on (it’s included in Plus and Advanced), you create a project tied to a customer and then assign the transactions that belong to it — invoices, expenses and bills, estimates, and billable time. The Project view then rolls those up into income, costs, and a running profit margin for that job, so you can see which projects make money and which quietly lose it. It’s built for job-costing-style work — construction, agencies, professional and field services — where profitability lives at the job level, not just the company level. The whole feature depends on clean assignment: a project is only as accurate as the transactions tagged to it.
Reference maintained by the Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor team at TechBrot Inc., an independent firm — not Intuit, and not Intuit’s official software support. Not affiliated with Intuit Inc.
QuickBooks Online Projects, in five questions.
What do QuickBooks Online Projects do?
Projects tracks income, costs, labor, and profitability by project or job in one place. You create a project tied to a customer, then assign the invoices, expenses, estimates, and billable time that belong to it — and QuickBooks rolls those up into a single view of that job’s income, costs, and profit margin, so you can see which work actually makes money.
Which QuickBooks Online plans include Projects?
Projects is included in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced. The lower plans don’t have it — so if you need job-level profitability, you need to be on Plus or Advanced. Upgrading the plan is an Intuit account and billing matter handled on Intuit’s side; the setup work inside your file is what an independent ProAdvisor does.
What can you assign to a project in QuickBooks Online?
Invoices, expenses and bills, estimates, and billable time. When you create or edit those transactions you tag them to the project so they roll into its profitability. The feature only reports on what you assign — an unassigned expense or an invoice posted to the customer but not the project simply won’t appear in that job’s numbers.
Is QuickBooks Online Projects the same as job costing?
It’s how QuickBooks Online does job costing. Job costing means tracking the income and costs of a specific job to see its profit; Projects is the feature that holds those transactions together and reports the result. It works well for construction, agencies, and professional or field services — any business where profitability lives at the job level, not just the company level.
Do I need an accountant to use QuickBooks Online Projects?
Not for a single simple project — many owners turn Projects on and assign transactions themselves. A Certified ProAdvisor earns their fee on the setup that makes job-costing accurate: mapping items and cost categories, wiring up estimates and progress invoicing, and reconstructing project costs when transactions have been half-assigned. We configure it inside your own QuickBooks file; an independent firm can’t touch your Intuit account or plan.
What QuickBooks Online Projects is, plainly.
Projects is the job-costing feature in QuickBooks Online. A project is a container for one job, engagement, or contract — tied to a customer — that gathers everything financial about that job in a single place. Instead of seeing only company-wide income and expenses, you see income, costs, labor, and profit for each project on its own. The feature is available in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced; the lower plans don’t include it.
The way it works is by assignment. After you turn Projects on and create a project, you tag the transactions that belong to it: the invoices you bill the customer, the expenses and bills you incur on the job, the estimates you quote, and the billable time your team logs against it. QuickBooks then rolls all of that up into the project’s income, its costs, and a running profitability figure — so a job that looked busy but barely cleared its costs shows up as exactly that, while a quietly profitable one is visible too.
It’s worth being precise about what makes it accurate. Projects doesn’t infer anything — it only reports on what you assign to it. A project is only as true as the transactions tagged to it; an expense left unassigned, or income posted to the customer but not the project, simply won’t appear in that job’s profitability. We describe QuickBooks Online’s behavior as it actually works — we don’t claim capabilities the feature doesn’t have.
What QuickBooks Online Projects do.
The moving parts of the feature, in the order you meet them — from turning it on through the profitability view that makes it worth doing.
Part 01 · Available in Plus and Advanced
Projects is included in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced — the lower plans don’t have it. If job-level profitability matters to the business, the plan has to support the feature first; you turn Projects on in settings once you’re on a plan that includes it. This is the one prerequisite everything else depends on.
Part 02 · A project gathers one job in one place
You create a project tied to a customer — one job, engagement, or contract. From then on it’s a container that gathers everything financial about that job: the money in, the money out, and the time spent. Instead of seeing only company-wide totals, you get a view scoped to a single piece of work, which is what makes the difference between jobs visible.
Part 03 · You assign income, costs, and time to the project
The feature works by assignment. As you create invoices, enter expenses and bills, build estimates, and log billable time, you tag each one to the project it belongs to. Those tagged transactions are what populate the project — Projects doesn’t infer anything, so a transaction that isn’t assigned simply doesn’t count toward that job.
Part 04 · Estimates and progress invoicing fit into a project
You can attach an estimate to a project and bill against it with progress invoicing — invoicing a portion of the estimate as the work is delivered. Inside the project, the estimate gives you the planned figure to compare actual income and costs against, which is how you catch a job drifting over budget while there’s still time to act on it.
Part 05 · The Project dashboard shows profitability
Each project has its own view that rolls the assigned transactions into income, costs, and a running profitability figure with a margin. That single number is the point of the feature: it tells you which jobs make money and which quietly lose it, without you reverse-engineering it from the company-wide P&L. The accuracy of that number is exactly as good as the assignment behind it.
The limit · What Projects does not do: invent data
Projects only reports on what you assign to it — it doesn’t guess. An expense left unassigned, income posted to the customer but not the project, or time logged without being tagged simply won’t appear in the job’s profitability. The feature is powerful, but it’s a mirror of your assignment discipline, not a substitute for it. Get the assignment right and the numbers are right.
How to use project tracking well.
Six steps, in order. The first turns the feature on; the rest are the habits that make project profitability accurate instead of misleading.
Turn Projects on (on Plus or Advanced)
Confirm you’re on a QuickBooks Online plan that includes Projects — Plus or Advanced — then enable Projects in account settings. Until it’s switched on you won’t see the Projects area at all. If you’re on a lower plan and need job costing, the plan upgrade is an Intuit billing matter handled on Intuit’s side.
Set up items and cost categories first
Job costing is only as useful as the structure underneath it. Before creating projects, set up the products and services items and the expense categories the way you want to see costs broken out, so income and costs land in meaningful buckets. Getting this right up front is far easier than re-categorizing a project’s history later.
Create a project for each job
Create a project tied to the right customer for each job, engagement, or contract you want to track. Name projects consistently so they’re easy to find and report on, and keep the scope of a project tight — one job per project — so its profitability means something rather than blending several pieces of work together.
Assign every related transaction to the project
This is the habit the whole feature rests on. As you invoice the customer, enter expenses and bills, build estimates, and log billable time, tag each one to the project it belongs to — every time, not just the obvious ones. The most common reason a project shows the wrong profit is simply transactions that were never assigned to it.
Use estimates and progress invoicing
Attach an estimate to the project to set the planned numbers, then bill against it with progress invoicing as work is delivered. This gives you planned-versus-actual inside the project, so you can compare what the job was supposed to cost and earn against what it’s actually doing — and catch overruns while you can still respond to them.
Review project profitability regularly
Open the Project dashboard on a regular cadence and read the income, costs, and margin for each active job. That’s where the feature pays off: spotting a job that’s slipping into the red, confirming a profitable one, and learning which kinds of work to take more of. Reviewing it only at the end of a job is reviewing it too late to act.
Want Projects set up so the profitability numbers can be trusted?
A Certified ProAdvisor reviews the file free, then turns Projects on, maps job costs and items, sets up estimates and progress invoicing, and gets every related transaction assigned — a focused job-costing setup is typically a $1,200–$3,000 fixed-fee scope; cleanup runs $1,500–$15,000+ if the books behind it are behind. Independent firm.
When a ProAdvisor should help.
Job-costing setup done right the first time
Mapping items, cost categories, and the chart of accounts so project profitability is meaningful takes judgment — structured enough to be useful, simple enough to maintain. Getting that foundation right when you turn Projects on is far cheaper than restructuring a year of project history later, and it’s exactly the setup a ProAdvisor does cleanly.
Estimates, progress invoicing, and clean assignment
Wiring up estimates and progress invoicing, and building the discipline that gets every invoice, expense, bill, and billable hour assigned to the right project, is where job costing either works or quietly produces numbers nobody trusts. A ProAdvisor sets the workflow up so assignment is routine rather than an afterthought, which is most of what makes Projects accurate.
When projects have been run half-assigned
If Projects has been switched on but transactions have only been assigned some of the time, the profitability figures are already unreliable — and reconstructing job costs across a stretch of history without double-counting is real cleanup work. That’s a file review and a fixed-fee scope, after which the projects report numbers you can actually use.
A Certified ProAdvisor configures project tracking inside your own books.
Turning Projects on takes a click; making project profitability tell the truth is the real work. A Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor confirms you’re on a plan that includes the feature, sets up the items and cost categories that job-costing depends on, wires up estimates and progress invoicing, and establishes the discipline that gets every invoice, expense, bill, and billable hour assigned to the right project. Where projects have been run with transactions half-assigned, we reconstruct the job costs so the profitability figures are real — against a written scope, inside your own QuickBooks Online file. Independent firm — not Intuit, and not Intuit’s software support; an Intuit account, plan, or billing matter stays with Intuit.
Free
file review first — we look before we scope
$1,200–$3,000
typical fixed-fee scope to set up project job-costing
Independent
Certified ProAdvisor firm — not Intuit, not Intuit’s software support
What people ask about QuickBooks Online Projects.
Is this Intuit’s official QuickBooks support?
What do QuickBooks Online Projects actually do?
Which QuickBooks Online plans have Projects?
What can I assign to a project?
Is Projects the same as job costing?
Can Projects track labor and time on a job?
Can you set up Projects in my QuickBooks Online file?
Why does my project show the wrong profit?
Want Projects set up so the numbers can be trusted?
We configure project tracking inside your own QuickBooks file.
Turning Projects on is one click; making project profitability accurate is the real work — mapping items and costs, setting up estimates and progress invoicing, and getting every related transaction assigned to the right job. That’s operational bookkeeping an independent ProAdvisor firm does inside your books. Start with a free file review; a focused job-costing setup is typically a $1,200–$3,000 fixed-fee scope, and if the books behind it are messy, a full cleanup runs $1,500–$15,000+. Written scope before any work begins.