Use classes in QuickBooks OnlineLast updated on 02/28/2023

Your company has two business units for plumbing: Plumbing Sales - Residential and Plumbing Sales - Commercial. Classes are assigned to your business units:

• Plumbing Sales - Residential (Class: Residential)

• Plumbing Sales - Commercial (Class: Commercial)

You have one income account for Plumbing Sales in QuickBooks, where you can view transactions for all plumbing sales. By using classes, you can view the transactions only related to commercial plumbing customers or residential plumbing customers.

A residential customer calls your company and wants to have their drain unclogged. Your CSR selects the Plumbing Sales- Residential business unit and books the job. You have assigned your Plumbing Sales- Residential business unit to the class Residential.

Your technician goes to the job and adds the Drain unclogging service to the invoice. The Drain unclogging service is mapped to the Plumbing Sales income account.

When you export the invoice to QuickBooks, the transaction will show in the Plumbing Sales income account. This income account would contain all transactions for your commercial and residential plumbing services.

A class is assigned to the services on the invoice based on the business unit selected by the CSR. In this example, the Drain unclogging service would be assigned to the residential class.

Even though you have one income account for both residential and commercial plumbing services, you would be able to easily view the income for just residential services by using a QuickBooks report by class.

If you did not have classes assigned to your business units, you would need to have separate services for residential and commercial plumbing jobs. In this example, you would need two services in your Pricebook:

• Drain unclogging - Residential (mapped to the Plumbing Sales income account)

• Drain unclogging - Commercial (mapped to the Plumbing Sales income account)

This would effectively double the size of your Pricebook, which would make it harder to manage.

Before you create classes in QuickBooks, you will need to ensure they will be shown on your invoice. This allows the class field on invoices to export to QuickBooks.

1. From the homepage screen, click the Company Gear (upper right corner).

2. Navigate to Settings > Company Settings.

3. Go to Company > Category.

4. Check the box for Track Classes.

You will need to create classes in QuickBooks and assign them to your business units before exporting. Note that classes must be manually created in QuickBooks. If you assign a class (that does not exist in QuickBooks) to a business unit, you will receive an error when exporting.

1. From the homepage screen, click the Company Gear (upper right corner).

2. Navigate to Lists > All Lists > Classes.

3. Click New.

4. Enter a name for the class.

5. Click Save.

You will need to link the QuickBooks classes you created to your business units.

1. Go to Settings > Business Units.

2. Click the Edit Pencil for the business unit you would like to link.

3. Navigate to the QuickBooks tab.

4. In the QuickBooksClass field, enter the name of the class you would like to link.

QuickBooks has two reports specifically for tracking class transactions:

• Profit & Loss by Class (Reports > Company & Financial > Profit & Loss by Class)

• Balance Sheet by Class (Reports > Company & Financial > Balance Sheet by Class)

You can also:

• View QuickReports for each class (right click on the class and select QuickReport)

• Customize a report to include classes (run a report and select Customize Report)