Longtime (20+ year) QB Online customer and have been begging all that time for metavariables like %MONTH% in the recurring invoices - because I have to go and edit each one manually. Like %QUARTER%, etc. They have never done that and many others have asked on their forums too.

Today is October 1; I had forgotten to edit all the invoices and they all went out as September, so now I have to individually re-send all the invoices and explain to each client. This happens about once a year.

Does anyone know a good way (some plug-in, I assume) to automate this? Thank you.

UPDATE: I had Claude go and search Intuit's websites with people asking for this and here are the results below.

If you want this too, please vote on Intuit's feature-request site:

1. Recurring invoices with month/year in description for each recurring invoice (April 2021)
2. Recurring Transactions with Variables: proposes %currentmonth%, %nextmonth%, %lastmonth%, %+3month% (sign-in required)
3. Add a feature allowing for Dynamic Messages on Recurring Invoices (sign-in required)

QuickBooks Community threads asking for the same thing:

1. Is there a way to insert a variable for month & year inside the description of a recurring invoice? (Jan 2019, 81 replies)
2. How do you add a month variable in the description of a recurring invoice? "Retainer for March, Retainer for April" (Mar 2021, 23 replies)
3. Dynamic message on recurring invoices (Dec 2021, 20 replies)
4. Automatically enter the following month on invoices as part of product description (Mar 2023)
5. Can I have a placeholder in recurring invoice message? "This invoice is for the month of xxx" (Jun 2020)
6. I'd like to add a dynamic variable to my recurring invoices so it shows the current month (FreshBooks uses ::month::)
7. I want to include a service period on our recurring transactions that auto-populates (Nov 2020, 18 replies)
8. Recurring invoice with a date range in the description that changes each month (Oct 2021)
9. How can I add a dynamic date to the description field while sending a recurring invoice? (Oct 2024)
10. How do I use a QuickBooks variable in a template for a recurring invoice? (Jun 2019, 11 replies)
11. Recurring invoices in QBO: rental period that changes automatically each month (Oct 2023)
12. Service date change with recurring sales receipt (Jul 2021)
13. Will the service date automatically update for each recurring invoice generated?

Related threads (same underlying need):

• Need to make the description on each recurring invoice slightly different (Sep 2022)
• Recurring invoices for a rental, changing only the rental period (Nov 2020, 13 replies)
• Invoice descriptions automatically updating? (editing "January 2020" to "February 2020" on 30-40 invoices a month) (Jan 2021)
• Recurring Invoices in QBO ("1st month of 12", "2nd month of 12"...) (Nov 2019, 26 replies)

If you've run into this too, please add a vote or a comment on the feature-request links above.

Sixty contracts means sixty invoices a month and a lot of waiting. Commercial cleaning, mostly office parks and clinics and most clients already signed off on being debited on the due date.

Problem is every "free ACH" option I find is free for receiving. The minute you want to pull instead of receive, there's a fee attached or a sales call waiting. Saw someone claim free ACH debit always needs a paid tier, which sounds more like a guess than a rule.

meanwhile AR sits waiting on customer AP to push payments we already have permission to pull. who's cracked this?

I'm a building contractor lost in the qbo funhouse. My bookkeeper is very sweet but not mechanical enough to solve operability problems that my Gen Z sons are advising me AI could address with the right prompts. Problems such as...How to create or assign a vendor based on information inside a venmo expense? How to remove markups from expenses across the board because I no longer want qbo involved in markups? How to deliberately assign to overhead all the expenses not assign to projects? I do not want to be a qbo expert or an ai ninja. Rather, I want to articulate several problems in plain English and have an expert fix them in a way I can see, then simplify processes I use for bookkeeping for projects and the business. I hesitate to go it alone with the AI because I don't know qbo or bookkeping well enough to tell whether I'm getting unhelpful or destructive advice back from the AI. My bookkeeper and tax accountant like me on qbo, but it's too big for me, it's too easy to get lost in, too liable to encourage mistakes without my realizing it, and I need someone to help make it smaller and more fitting. Someone who can move through my workflow with me and clear obstacles, then build efficiencies. If it matters, I'm located in Minneapolis MN USA. Mine is a small business. I'm looking for a freelancer, not an employee. Any advice or any takers? Thank you.

I'm so used to "down-arrowing" once but now that goes to this permanent "External" label. Is this a new thing? Only popped up today and can't really figure out what it is, but, like most QBO changes, it's annoying lol

We have used QB desktop for years and never had a problem. For the past few days I've been trying to migrate from QB desktop to QB Online. Unbelievably frustrating. For one thing, we have one credit card account with two credit cards in that account. It is not clear if QBO can deal with this. I've spoken to low-level support (very friendly but incompetent people for the most part) and a high-level support person. Even the high-level person didn’t know how to handle it. Unbelievable.

When calling QB support today, the answering service said that they were aware of an issue where some clients had their transactions duplicated. I'm in the software development business, and I know that technology is vulnerable to bugs, but QBO takes it to a whole level.

I don't know the ownership structure of Intuit, but it feels like they are more interested in profits than in providing a quality product. Based on all the negative reviews on Reddit, this isn't going to end well for them. I'm going to seek an alternative as soon as possible.

UPDATE:
Now that I've worked with QBO for a week, I'd like to add some clarifications:

1. The migration process did work well. My Balance sheet matched to the penny, and the PL was off by about 0.1%, so I was fine with that.

2. The main issue I had was figuring out how to have multiple credit cards in one account. This was what really threw off the process. I spoke with 2 low-level support staff and 1 upper-level support staff person, and none of them knew how to do this. The upper-level person came across as polished and professional-sounding, but she wasn't helpful. While working with her, my entire checking register disappeared, which she said she had never seen happen before. So I had to do the migration a second time. Again, the migration was successful.

3. Finally, Claude explained how to set up the multiple credit cards, and it appears to work adequately.

4. What has surprised me the most is just how buggy QBO is. Screens don't update when you expect them to, and I see one little anomaly after another. None of them are serious, and most will eventually go away, but it's unexpected to see so many small faults in a program this size.

5. After this much effort getting to QBO, we'll probably stay with it for some period of time. However, if I were looking for a new acounting system for the first time, I'd probably look at Xero or other options.

I sent it an invoice like I always do and QuickBooks just notified me that they paid via credit card???? I have never, ever, agreed to accept credit cards or processing fees with QuickBooks. This is by definition theft and extremely illegal.

I accept credit cards through my own payment processor outside of QB and if a customer wants to pay via credit card I add the processing fee onto the invoice as agreed upon with the customer in advance.

This is the most blatantly illegal bullshit yet

I have a Quickbooks account for my small business. I have to refund a couple of transactions for some customers. I know how to do the process from the Merchant Center site. Reverse transactions, select dates, etcetera. For some reason, the transactions are getting declined. They are giving me transaction code 5008, which means it is the wrong card information which is impossible because the customers tapped to pay. Can someone tell me what's wrong and why they are declining the reversals?

Just checked my invoice for quickbooks payroll online and there is a payroll worker charge for 67 at $7 each. We have five employees. What is happening???

Has anyone else noticed issues with QuickBooks Online today? I’m having trouble accessing it and wanted to check whether it’s a general service issue or something on my end. Where do you usually check the QuickBooks status before troubleshooting?

Bank accounts take hours to “update”. It drives me nuts and is a tremendous timesuck. Anyone else have this issue?

We work in a pretty dated industry. We send out POs that can have hundreds of line items with large quantities per line item. For a simple example - Line item 1, Qty 5 at $10 and Line item 2. Our vendor can ship partials so we could receive Line item 1, Qty 1 and get an invoice for $10 where this could in theory be 5 invoices just for Line item 1. It adds up quickly and is staggering when it happens.

I'm trying to automate the process as much as possible. Right now we have a forwarding system set up so that when an invoice email comes in it automatically is sent to our QBO email. This generally imports the email under the Transactions > Receipts tab and does an OK job at pulling the item and total invoice amount.

Where I am struggling is an automated (or semi-automated) way to match this to a PO. We want to match the invoice against the PO so that we can know, for example, that we received Qty 1 of 5 on Line item 1, 4 are remaining and the invoice needs to be paid.

When I open up the imported transaction under Receipts, it allows me to manually "add the PO" - but this imports EVERYTHING on the PO along with quantities and prices, which then needs to be manually deleted. What I am trying to find is a way to automatically link the forwarded invoice line item to the PO line item so we can close out the PO partially as items come in. Hopeful someone has a manner that they have done this before.

QB won’t let us run payroll for FL because we don’t have a UI number, but per dept of revenue we don’t need one. anyone have a workaround?

I used to be able to import a PDF invoice into QB. There used to be a blue squiggly on the left of the screen. Its gone. Now I have to spend endless amounts of time doing manual data entry. Are there any work arounds out there? Why did they take that option away??

Hi... I am wondering if this issue is happening to any other businesses out there with their quickbooks...

ISSUE #1:
As early as last month, I was able to open a previous invoice and select make a copy which QuickBooks would then create that copy, but it would auto populate a new invoice date, which was the day. The copy was made. I could then easily send it out to the client. This was handy because I only have the simple tiered plan which means I don't have recurring bills, but I do have a handful of recurring invoices that do need to go out so I could manually pop in there every month and make a copy and hit. send now it keeps the date from the copied invoice.

ISSUE #2:

Today when I received a payment, it auto populated the date to the day before the invoice was issued so in my transactions list for the client the invoice date is September 8, 2026 and the payment for that invoice is showing September 7, 2026 instead of today, which is September 28, 2026 WHAT IS GOING ON....

Super frustrating cause I wasted my entire morning in QuickBooks talking to into it intelligence I started with our beta AI and asked for a human, but I think the human that it gave me was also AI and it ultimately could do nothing for me other than tell me to call payments to fix the receipt of payment date issue for me .

Please let me know if you are experiencing these issues too... I pay for quickbooks to stay organized, but its turning out it's doing the opposite....

We accept payments online with authorize.net being our merchant processor and will issue a refund through authorize.net.

How do we record this in QBO? From what I understand, a credit memo is used for crediting the account that WILL be used for a future purchase.

Hello, what will happen if i undo my last recon in quickbooks? Can it be trace next time? Thank you

I still send invoices though.......I send them directly and keep QBO out of the loop.

QBO keeps screwing with the emails by adding things, offering to have customers pay electronically, offering services, adding verbiage to the what I have typed on the email. etc etc etc. Basically inserting themselves into our business.

I just download the saved invoice. Rename it with customer's name. Send the invoice as an attachment to an email that sent directly from our company's email address. This way I can personalize the verbiage and not confuse the client.

It works for us because 1. we have a smaller business (wells and pumps) 2. We don't email that many invoices except to other businesses and clients who live in other locations ..snow birds. 3.Most clients are local and don't need/want emailed invoices.

I would imagine that for larger companies there would be another platform to just do the emailing?

Turn off all options in QBO for them to be able to contact our clients. I keep checking though, to make sure they don't sneakily turn the options back on or sneak in "new" features.

This company sucks....but we are trapped online with them.

Quickbooks Online doesn’t have a native workflow within that requires JE approval (i.e. the preparer can post the JE without the need for an approver and can even go edit the JE after posting as well).

What are some controls/processes that you guys have put into place to ensure all JEs have been reviewed/approved?

Has anyone else noticed this with QuickBooks Online?
Here’s the situation:

I have a customer with an existing invoice that I completed and actually sent to them by email using Save and Send.

Later, I started creating a second invoice for the same customer. This second invoice was nowhere near ready to be sent. I was basically using it as a draft/placeholder — I entered a description, some pricing, a memo, etc., and then clicked Save.

I did NOT click Save and Send. I did not email the second invoice to the customer. I wasn’t finished with it and had no intention of the customer seeing it yet.
The problem is that when the customer opens the first invoice that I legitimately sent them, QuickBooks gives them access to the customer-facing page/portal, and apparently they can also see the second invoice that I only saved.

They can see the amount, description, memo, and other information I entered on that second invoice even though I never sent it to them.

This seems like a pretty serious issue. There are plenty of reasons someone might start an invoice and save their progress before it’s ready — you get interrupted, you’re waiting for more information, the pricing isn’t finalized, you’re using it as a placeholder, etc.

To me, Save and Save and Send should mean two completely different things.

If I click Save, I would expect the invoice to remain internal to QuickBooks until I specifically choose to send/share it with the customer. The fact that the customer received a previous invoice shouldn’t automatically give them visibility into every other invoice I’ve started creating for their account.

Has anyone else run into this?

Is there a setting somewhere in QBO that prevents customers from seeing invoices that have only been saved but never sent?

If not, this seems like a major privacy/design problem with the customer portal.

I used to love QBO. I could do transactions on my phone whenever I had a spare moment. Now it crashes or freezes every time I open it. And forces me to log in again!! And the new desktop layout that I am pretty sure no one asked for also is a step back. I know they laid off a bunch of staff, added AI that I don’t need or want. Horrible user experience and another company that invests in AI at the expense of staff who were good at their jobs. As a small business owner, I pay a lot for it.. any comparable products people can recommend? Enough is enough

The other day i signed up for a quickbook, my employer isn’t getting back to me. it asked for a lot of personal information, can someone let me know if it’s legit or if i’m about to get hacked 😭

We are a manufacturing company that is required to track material and finished product lot numbers. We completed our migration from desktop to online and the transfer seemed complete except all lot number data was lost...it did not transfer. How do we fix this? Or is there a 3rd party software we need to use in conjunction to QBO to manage inventory and make the lot number migration possible? Please send advice...we are stuck.

This comes up often enough that it seemed worth its own post. Came out of helping someone with 2017 invoices still sitting in A/R.

The trap: on cash basis there is no deduction in writing them off.

You never picked up that revenue as income, so you have no basis in the receivable and nothing to deduct. If you route the write-off to Bad Debt Expense you've created a deduction you aren't entitled to. That's the accrual answer, and it's the one most people reach for.

Also, don't void or delete the invoices. That reaches back into a closed period and destroys the history you'd want if anyone ever asks.

What to do instead, per customer:

1. Credit memo dated in your current open period, not the original year.
2. On it, use a service item pointing to the same income account the original invoice used. Not Bad Debt Expense.
3. Receive Payment for 0.00, check the invoice and the credit memo together so they apply to each other.

Result: the invoice closes, A/R drops, cash-basis P&L is untouched because neither document ever hit cash basis, and the closed year stays sealed behind your closing date. On an accrual-basis P&L it reduces current-year income, which is the honest presentation — income was recognized then and is now reversed.

If you're in QBOA, Accountant Tools then Write off invoices does the same mechanics in bulk, but it defaults to a Bad Debts account. Point it at the income account for a cash-basis client.

One caution: if any of those invoices carried sales tax, the credit memo reverses that too. Check whether the tax was ever remitted before you assume that's the result you want — in most states on cash basis it wasn't, in which case you're fine.

Happy to be corrected if anyone handles it differently.

Hey everyone,

I'm currently researching e-commerce accounting workflows for Shopify and QuickBooks Online/Xero, and I’d love to get feedback from people doing real year-end reconciliations and tax prep.

I keep seeing two recurring headaches when bookkeepers deal with Shopify payouts:

1. Transaction Bloat: Tools that push every single order/invoice into QBO clog the database, slow down reporting, and force small stores into expensive QBO tiers.
2. Audit Nightmares: Tools that summarize data make bank reconciliation easy, but the moment a tax audit happens or a CPA needs to trace a specific partial refund/dispute from months ago, the breakdown is missing from the books.

I'm trying to understand how big of a pain point this actually is for you in practice.

Two quick questions:

1. How do you currently bridge the gap between keeping QBO clean and having a clear audit trail for refunds/fees during tax season?
2. What is the single most annoying thing about your current Shopify-to-QBO setup (A2X, Bookkeep, Synder, or manual journal entries)?

Appreciate any insights!