Comparing project cost estimates to actuals in QuickBooks Online Advanced

Australian QuickBooks readers have been bringing the news desk the same project question: the job is quoted, the invoices go out, the supplier bills arrive, so where does the software show estimated cost against actual? The numbers exist. QuickBooks just keeps them apart unless the project is set up in a particular way, and readers on the wrong plan never see the comparison at all.

The estimate tools sit in Advanced

The estimate-versus-actual view depends on project cost quotes, a feature of QuickBooks Online Advanced, including the Australian edition. On lower plans the option is simply absent, which many readers first read as a fault in their company file. It is not a fault. Intuit gates the tool behind the Advanced tier, and no setting will switch it on anywhere else.

Even on Advanced, two settings have to be in place before a quote can carry a cost side. First, open Account and settings, then Expenses, and edit the Bills and expenses section so the items table shows on expense and purchase forms. Second, give every product or service a purchase mapping. Edit the item under Products and services, confirm it is bought from a supplier, and select an expense or cost of sales account for it.

Readers who skip that mapping end up with quotes that carry income only, and the cost columns stay empty. The report at the other end is equally lopsided, which is usually the moment someone posts the question.

Building the quote

From the project record, choose Add to project, then Project quote. Each line takes a product or service and a quantity. Two rates sit on every line: your rate, which is the cost, and the customer rate, which is the price. Either one can be left blank when you only want to forecast one side of the job.

The markup column fills itself from the gap between the two rates. Change the markup and the customer rate follows, which catches people out the first time. Totals underneath show estimated costs, estimated income, and the projected margin before anything is billed.

A quote can go straight to the customer from the same screen. The customer sees the price and nothing else; costs, markup, and margin stay inside the file. New quotes begin in a pending status until they move forward.

The redirect that looks like a bug

One quirk has caught Australian readers in particular. You pick the option to create a quote, and the program drops you on the project quote page when you wanted the standard Quotes page. The accepted answer traces this to the project quote conversion setting rather than to any corruption in the file.

The fix lives on the Quotes page itself. Choose Manage, then Customisation, and switch Project quote conversion off. Quote creation then behaves the way it did before, and project quotes remain available separately when you want them.

Reading the numbers once the job runs

With the quote saved and expenses flowing in, the project reporting produces the comparison readers were after. Estimated income and costs sit beside the actual figures drawn from bills, expenses, and recorded time, with the job’s margin in between. Run it partway through the work and it doubles as a warning light: if actual costs are already closing on the estimate, there is still time to change something.

Two habits keep the comparison honest. Refresh the quote when scope changes rather than letting a stale estimate drift through the whole job. And make sure supplier bills are coded to the mapped expense accounts, so the actuals land where the report expects to find them.

The bottom line

For readers on Plus or below, the honest position is that this comparison is not available on the plan at all. Whether that justifies a move to Advanced comes down to how much per-project margin matters to the business, and nobody outside it can answer that.

For readers already on Advanced, the accepted workflow is the whole recipe: turn on the items table, map the products and services, build the cost quote, then read the project report. The parts that look like errors usually turn out to be a missing mapping or the quote conversion setting. We will keep following the thread as more readers put the workflow to work.