Project costs and figures
Charge costs and revenue to a project
Choose the project, and optionally the task, on your everyday documents so every cost and sale of the job reaches its figures without a separate entry.
3 min readLast updated
In this article
A project's figures come from the documents you already enter. When you record an expense, a purchase invoice or a journal entry for a job, choose its Project on the same screen. There is no second entry to make and nothing to allocate at month end.
Before you start
The project must exist and must not be closed. Closed projects are not offered. See Create and manage projects.
The project fields appear only when your plan includes Projects & Contracting and you may view projects.
To report by task, set up the project's tasks first. See Break a project into tasks.
Where to choose the project
Document | Where | What is charged to the project |
|---|---|---|
Expense (Accounting › Payments › Expenses) | Project and Task under the amount | The expense |
Other cash receipts | Project and Task | The income |
Journal entry | The Project column on each line | Each line, separately |
Purchase invoice | Project and Task next to the notes | Every item line of the invoice |
Purchase order | Project and Task next to the notes | Carried to the invoice made from the order |
Sales invoice | Project | The sales revenue and the cost of the goods sold |
Expense claim | Project and Task on the claim | The expense, when the claim is paid |
Steps, for an expense
Open Accounting › Payments › Expenses and fill in the expense as usual. See Record an expense.
In Project, start typing the project's code or name and choose it.
Optional: choose the Task. Only the active tasks of that project are listed.
Select Submit.
The other documents work the same way: pick the project, and the task if you use them, before saving.
What reaches the project
Only the side of the entry that belongs to the job is charged to it: the expense, the cost, the revenue. The cash, bank, supplier, customer and tax lines are never charged to a project, so the project shows what the job earned and cost, not how it was paid.
On a journal entry each line carries its own project. That is how you split one shared cost between several jobs: one line per project for its share.
Common questions
I forgot to choose the project. Correct the document where your process allows it, or move the amount with a journal entry: one line crediting the account without a project, one debiting it with the project.
Why is the project not in the list? It is closed, or it belongs to another company. Ask the project manager to reopen it if the cost really belongs to it.
Can a payment to a supplier be charged to a project? No. The cost is charged when the purchase invoice is recorded; paying the supplier only settles the balance.