How do I run job profitability reports in QuickBooks?
Running a job profitability report in QuickBooks takes about 30 seconds once you know where to find it. The hard part isn’t running the report. It’s making sure the data behind it is accurate enough to trust.
In QuickBooks Online, go to Reports and search for “Profit and Loss by Customer” or “Job Profitability Summary.” The Job Profitability Detail report shows revenue and costs broken down by customer or project. In QuickBooks Desktop, you’ll find similar reports under Reports > Jobs, Time & Mileage.
The report only shows what’s in your books. If expenses aren’t coded to the right jobs, the profitability numbers will be wrong. A report showing 40% margin on a job doesn’t mean much if half the labor costs are sitting in a general expense category instead of allocated to that specific project.
For job profitability reports to work, every cost that belongs to a job needs to be assigned to that job. Material purchases, labor hours, subcontractor invoices, equipment rentals, permit fees. When you enter a bill or write a check, you need to tag it to the customer or job it belongs to. Same with time entries if you’re tracking labor that way. Proper construction job costing setup is what makes these reports trustworthy. Without it, you’re just looking at numbers that feel right but don’t reflect reality.
Revenue needs to be assigned correctly too. If you invoice a customer for multiple jobs under one invoice, you need to split it by job in QuickBooks or your profitability per job will be skewed.
The reports also won’t include costs you haven’t recorded yet. If you’re running profitability mid-project and haven’t entered the latest material invoices, your costs look artificially low. Many contractors wait until a job is complete and all costs are in before evaluating final profitability.
Customize the report to show what matters. Add columns for estimated costs if you’re comparing budget to actual. Filter by date range or job status. Export to Excel if you need to do additional analysis or present numbers to partners or lenders.
If the numbers look off when you run the report, the problem is usually upstream in how costs are being recorded. This is where bookkeeping services in American Fork focused on contractors can help. Getting job costing right from the start means your reports actually tell you which jobs made money and which ones didn’t.
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