Billing a Client for Multiple Projects on One Invoice

Sometimes clients can be very particular about how they want you to invoice them for work.  In this case, a consulting client for several ongoing projects wanted each invoice to include a summary by project for all hours worked that period. Since QuickBooks is designed to invoice customers at a project level, this presented a problem. The solution below can only be used in a limited scenario because it replaces jobs in the customer list with service items in the item list. Instead of tracking time at a customer/job level and using items to categorize a type of service, we are tracking time at a customer ONLY level and using items to identify projects.

In the example below, we see that the customer, Harrison Norwood has a number of jobs in progress and we are logging time activities for each job.


We have created items in the item list as subitems of the item “Harrison Norwood” to keep things organized as shown below.


By recording time at a customer level and using items to identify jobs, we can see a “Time by Job Detail” report organized by client with no underlying job, instead using our new items in place of the jobs.


This will allow us to generate a single invoice for all “jobs” by using items. You are now ready to create an invoice. Select "Invoice for Time and Expenses" from the "Customers" menu. Select "Harrison Norwood" from a list by Customer and Jobs and then select "Create Invoice" and "Selected Items".


Select the “Option” icon.


For this client we will combine activities with the same service item and rate.


We have now created an invoice that includes hour spent on all jobs. Here’s the “gotcha”. Unless you select an activity detail activity notes will not be included. Unfortunately, when you select a detail the activities will be listed in date order an not project by date order. You can, however, modify the summary description for each item to type in notes about the work done on that project.


The resultant invoice is shown below.

Robert Guild is certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor in Austin, TX who conducts CPE courses for CPAs and individual training and group classes to QuickBooks users. His company at www.QBCoach.biz, maintains a sixteen-station QuickBooks lab, providing hands-on training. You can contact him directly at rguild@QBCoach.biz or follow him on twitter at QBPro