How can I pull a simple report of my cost per job/project?

Question

I create Vendor Bills and when doing so, I add a Job/Project to the Bill so that I track the overall job cost.

The only report I see to view this is "Project/Job by Project".

The layout of this report is not ideal, and it's a bit difficult to work with, but it would work if not for the fact that it cuts off my project names and I can't tell them apart.  For example, I have projects like:

* PayPal for WooCommerce
* PayPal for WooCommerce - CC Split   (this is an add-on to the first one)
* PayPal for WooCommerce - Multi Account   (another add-on)

Then on the report I see headers like this:

So I have multiple columns that say "PayPal for Wo..." and I can't tell which is which.  Same with my "PayPal IPN for..." and others as well.

I was hoping for a simple report that would give me my jobs with cost right next to them.  Should fit on a single, portrait print-out.  I don't see any way to get that done, though.

Are there are other reports I can use for job/project, or is this really all I have?

Any information on this would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

EDIT - I found where I can view my Project/Job List under the Business section of Quicken (Business Tools).  Here I can view the list and see the full titles, which is good, and if I have it expanded I can see all the Bills that I paid for that project with the total of each Bill.  However, it is not giving me the grand total cost for the project, which is displaying 0.00, so I have to add up all the rows myself by hand, which is not ideal.  I feel like I must be doing something wrong here.

EDIT 2 - I used the project list to rename my projects with smaller names so that they wouldn't get cut off on the report header.  This allows me to do what I'm needing to do right now, but I would still appreciate some feedback on a better way to generate job reports.  Thanks.

Andrew Angell · Answer

Hi, thanks for the reply.  Yes, I tried those things as well, so there are options, but none of them are great. The Excel export is formatted in a similar fashion, so it takes quite a bit of data massaging there to get it where I'd want.  Maybe just a personal preference thing.

I wound up renaming my projects with internal codes instead of full names, and that allowed me to see the labels so I could get the numbers I needed, and I just threw those into a separate spreadsheet manually.

I think part of my problem is that on the other side of things I'm not creating actual invoices for all of the income entries.  I'm simply entering them directly into registries with categories like Sales -> Software -> Product Name.

I'll probably just start doing the same with my expenses.  That way I can create a single invoice and include all expenses from a contract for different products.  Right now I have to create separate Vendor Bills for every project, but my vendors (software devs) send me a single invoice for 10+ separate projects at a time.

This should also solve my problem of getting reports the way I'd like.

So I guess if I was entering invoices for everything that might be easier, but getting PayPal transactions into Quicken as Invoices with line items and fees applied...I would love for somebody to tell me how to get that done.  heh

Quicken_Tyka · Answer

Hello @Andrew Angell

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your question and your experience.

I wanted to add that while in the "Project/Job" list you may customize the screen a bit further and print out the list. This may give you what you are needing.

If not, you may also export the Project/Joby by Project to Excel to customize the report further.

I hope this helps and perhaps another member may stop by and share their own personal tips and experience.

-Quicken Tyka