{"id":11063,"date":"2018-07-24T10:58:11","date_gmt":"2018-07-24T14:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foundationsoft.com\/?p=11063"},"modified":"2025-05-05T09:03:35","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T13:03:35","slug":"job-costing-quickbooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foundationsoft.com\/learn\/job-costing-quickbooks\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Ways You Can Do Job Costing in QuickBooks Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

Job costing is critical for any construction contractor, whatever software you use. Ideally, a contractor uses a best-of-breed system that\u2019s sophisticated enough for the specialized billing, payroll, and reporting their business needs.<\/a> However, many successful contractors<\/strong> aren\u2019t quite ready to fit a construction-specific accounting application. In that case, software like QuickBooks Online or Xero might be excellent options for them.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll sometimes hear that QuickBooks can\u2019t do job costing. And that\u2019s not quite true. Over 20,000 companies<\/a> in the US use QuickBooks Payroll. Now, most of these are probably not construction companies. But, for contractors who aren’t ready for construction-specific specialized accounting software, they can make due with generic software like QuickBooks.<\/p>\n

QuickBooks Online has a few ways to pull project reporting that can be similar to job costing software<\/a>. At the time of publishing, each requires the QuickBooks Online Plus<\/strong> edition.<\/p>\n

However, if you\u2019re a contractor who plans to do job costing in QuickBooks online<\/strong>, you should exhaust your options to get as much project data as possible out of your software.<\/p>\n

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READ: “Do You Even Need New Construction Accounting Software?” \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n\"UG<\/a>\n

<\/span>1. Using Sub-Customers as Jobs<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

One common method to try to job cost in QuickBooks<\/strong> is the \u201cSub-Customer Method.\u201d What QuickBooks desktop editions used to call \u201cjobs,\u201d QuickBooks Online calls \u201csub-customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are simply customer records that you\u2019re able to nest underneath a \u201cparent\u201d customer like a subcategory. Just like a job can only have one customer, a sub-customer<\/em> can belong to only one customer record.<\/p>\n

Sub-customers are used for slightly different purposes by numerous other industries. A designer might use them to track multiple projects for a single client. A bookkeeper or consultant might use sub-customers for each of several businesses operated by the same person. Intuit even suggests that they could represent member teams in a league.<\/p>\n

For contractors<\/strong>, however, sub-customers can function as a work-around in order to gain some amount job cost reporting<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Adding Sub-customers in QuickBooks<\/span><\/h3>\n
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  1. To add a sub-customer, select \u201cSales\u201d on the left sidebar.<\/li>\n
  2. Click on the \u201cCustomers\u201d tab.<\/li>\n
  3. Click on the [New customer] button in the upper right corner.<\/li>\n
  4. Enter the name of the desired project<\/em><\/strong> name Company name<\/em> and Display name<\/em>. To avoid confusion, this name should be distinct from the name of the customer. It should also be identifiable from any other projects they might have now or in the future.<\/li>\n
  5. Select the \u201cparent\u201d customer record from the drop-down menu. This will be the actual customer the project is for.<\/li>\n
  6. Enable the Is sub-customer<\/em> checkbox.<\/li>\n
  7. Select \u201cBill with parent\u201d in order to tie the invoice to the customer when recording an expense under the sub-customer.<\/li>\n
  8. Click [Save].<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/span>Using Items as Cost Codes<\/span><\/h3>\n

    For contractors, a basic traditional job cost structure<\/strong> will typically include:<\/p>\n