Business Projects list not appearing in drop down on invoices

PostProdGuy

Using Quicken Home, Business and Rental Property, 2020, vers R23.14, build 27.1.13.14, on Windows 10

I have a side business selling photo prints and books. I created a Project for which I have several customers who have ordered both books and prints I want to put under that single Project title - one project, many customers.

However, when entering a new customer invoice, I have to re-type the Project Name every time. A drop down arrow to the right of that data entry cell shows a completely empty list. Previously, that list was populated - in fact, when I go to older invoices and check those, the Project List is populated as expected. But even in that populated list my new Project name is missing.

Any ideas why the drop down Project List is now empty?

Quicken_Natalie

Hello PostProdGuy,

Thank you for providing the details of this issue to the Community, although I apologize you have not yet received a response.

The Quicken Project/Job feature helps you track multiple jobs for a given customer. Therefore, the specific Project/Job must be assigned to the customer who is being invoiced, in order to have the Project/Job available to select in the drop-down menu. 

Please see the information outlined here and here for more details. 

I suggest taking a look at your Project/Job List to determine if the customer you are creating the invoice for is associated with that particular Project/Job. You may do so by going to Business>Project/Job List. From the list, you can double click on any Project/Job to edit the information. 

Also, you may consider taking a look at the "Status" of the job in the Project/Job List, as any that are marked as Closed will not be available in the drop-down menu when creating an invoice.

Hope this helps!

-Quicken Natalie

PostProdGuy

Thank you for the response. Maybe this is a "chicken or the egg" situation.

I started by first creating an invoice, and typing my project name in the appropriate cell on the invoice. I assumed that in turn would create a project, which it seemed to do the first time I did this for a project

(the project is a photo book; my project name is the title of the book; I've had a few dozen orders for the book, so my goal was to create a one to many kind of project to customers relationship)

However, on each successive new invoice I created (each was a new customer so not in any existing customer list), when I typed in a Project Name I expected the now existing project name to come up; alternately, I expected a drop down list to appear. In every case I had to type in the project name anew, and I think the system thus created new projects each with the same name. In no case does a drop down list appear with existing project names from which to choose.

Further, when I go to Business>Project/Job List, I do not see all of the customers for whom I've entered invoices - only a few.

So I'm either doing something wrong with the sequence in which I'm entering data (i.e., should I be first creating a customer record, then creating an invoice for that customer? I do not see a means to create an independent Project List, independent of creating a customer) (I should think first creating a Project before recording sales against that project would be an appropriate capability - I make projects and have no idea who might order against the project, for example, thus Project first before customer makes sense to me)

Anyway, my ultimate goal is to generate a report for my Project that shows all the customers who've ordered against it (some ordered just books; some ordered prints and books).

PostProdGuy

Further, when I run a Project / Job by Project report, several of the customers show up under the column "No Job". When I go back into their invoices, I try to re-enter the project name, it appears to accept it, I save with the revision, reopen the invoice only to find the project cell once again blank.

So for some reason in some cases Quicken is not saving the project name. It seems when it does save the project name as I enter an invoice, it prompts me to add the project name as a new project. When it does not prompt me to add the project name as a new project, then the project name is not saved.