QBO & QBOA Projects - Two-sides of the Same Coin

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Recently both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Online-Accountant added 'Projects' to their feature set, but there seemed to be one problematic issue...the two projects appear to be entirely different even though they are both called Projects. But the reality is that they are not that different after all, at least not on the back-side of the functionality.

In reality each of the project features reflect one side of the two-sided 'project' coin. Think of the QBO Project functionality as 'Heads' on a Silver Dollar, and the QBOA Project functionality as 'Tails' on a Silver Dollar. Right now, QBO and QBOA each have a different project feature-set, but what if Intuit 'flips the coin'?

In QBO the new project feature gave users the ability to create a tracking mechanism similar to 'jobs' in QuickBooks Desktop. Projects are associated with a Customer in QBO and allow you to link transactions to the project so you can look at profitability on a project by project basis. This type of tracking has been a main-stay of QBD and was welcomed into QBO with shouts of joy by those who had been waiting for what many think of as 'job costing.'

In QBO-Accountant the new project feature gives accountants a way to track a group of activities and tasks, and to associate those activities and tasks with their clients, and also assigned staff. Projects provide a means to track the work to be done based upon things like a starting date and potential due date. This feature is part of the Practice Management functionality of QBO-A, and substantially increases the capabilities of this tool, especially for small accounting firms that are not big enough for an add-on workflow manager.

But let's get back to this 'two-sided' coin business using an easy example.

Imagine you are a contractor who needs to track a project not only in terms of the project itself, but specific activities and tasks. Wouldn't it be great to incorporate that functionality as part of your QBO projects? But that's exactly what projects offer in QBO-A.

So, when Intuit flips the coin....and adds the QBO-A project functionality to QBO projects we have a highly flexible way of tracking all the work to be done in our project, as well as all the costs and revenues.

At the exact same time, the flip of the coin means the ability to track revenues and expenditures against a project of work being performed by one or several different staff members within our accounting firm, because the financial functional of QBO projects gets incorporated into QBO-A projects.

How exciting is this, folks? Two great 'full feature' enhancements with the flip of one coin. It's like both sides winning at the 'big game'.

So, while we don't have both sides of the coin in either QBO or QBO-A yet, they are clearly on their way and coming soon.

In the mean time, if you're an accountant using QBOA you can turn-on the QBO Project functionality in your own firm’s books. You can do so by accessing settings via the Gear Icon > Company Settings > Advanced > Projects. Be aware, once you turn-on Projects in your firm books you will not be able to undo the change.

Even though you turn-on QBO Project-functionality in your own firm's books, it will at present remain optimized for QBO small business users. Intuit is continuing to partner with accountants to define the future project functionality for accountants before the general release of 'this side of the coin.'