QuickBooks Online Projects: plan limits and the setup step users miss

Questions about the Projects feature in QuickBooks Online keep landing in community threads. Most come from people who cannot find the tool at all, or who found it and then stalled during setup. The accepted answer, maintained by Intuit, addresses both problems. The cause is usually the subscription tier, and the fix for Accountant users is one switch with a permanent consequence.

Availability depends on the subscription

Projects exists to track income and costs for a single job, engagement or build. It ships with QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced, with QuickBooks Online Accountant, and with Intuit Enterprise Suite. It does not ship with the lower tiers of QuickBooks Online. When the menu is missing, the plan comes first. No setting adds the feature to a subscription that excludes it. An upgrade, not a workaround, is the only route in.

The thread carries a United Kingdom locale tag on its help content, but the steps describe menus any English-language user would recognise. The tier list is the same either way.

How do you turn Projects on in Accountant?

Plus and Advanced accounts get Projects switched on by default. Accountant is the exception. There the feature waits, disabled, until someone enables it by hand. The route runs through Settings, then Company settings, then the Advanced tab. Under the Projects heading, expand the section with Edit and turn on the option for project financial tracking. Save the change, then confirm it with Done.

Two things follow. The feature becomes available across the account, ready for use. And it stays on for good: the answer states plainly that the setting cannot be turned off again. A firm wanting a cautious trial should weigh that before committing.

Creating a project stays simple

Open the Projects area from the All apps menu. A first-time user sees a Start a project button; afterwards the New project button does the same job. The form asks for a project name, a customer, a start date and an end date. Status and notes are optional. Notes can hold a reference or a site address, useful when several projects share one customer. Save it, and the project can receive transactions, both new records and existing ones.

Adding transactions, expenses and time

New activity starts inside the project itself. Open the project, choose a transaction type from the Add to project dropdown, enter the details, and save. Existing expenses take a different path. Open the expense transaction list from the Expenses & Bills area, select a record, and pick the project in the Customer/Project column before saving.

Timesheets take a third path. Time entries, where that area is available, or the weekly timesheet, both let you assign work to a project. The tagging serves a purpose: once records carry the project, its page shows financial progress, with income set against costs. The answer also gestures at attaching existing invoices, but its steps stop mid-sentence. We leave that alone rather than guess at bookkeeping instructions.

Reassigning a customer has a catch

A project can change hands. Open it, select Edit, and choose the new customer from the dropdown. Save, then confirm the reassignment when prompted. The consequence is broad: every past invoice and estimate linked to the project moves to the new customer. Anything still outstanding must go out again under the new name. That is designed behaviour, not a fault, but it deserves a pause before the click.

The short version

If the menu is missing, check the plan first: Plus, Advanced, Accountant or Intuit Enterprise Suite. Accountant users must enable the feature once, and that choice is permanent. Setup afterwards is quick. Name the project, attach a customer, and feed it activity from the project screen, the expense list or the timesheet. Slow down only for a customer reassignment, because history follows the change and outstanding documents need a resend.