QuickBooks Online for House Flippers: Projects vs Classes

Which QuickBooks Online plan do you need to track flips?

Plus or Advanced. Those are the plans that include projects and class tracking, the tools that tag a cost to a property. The plan table below links each fact to Intuit's own page.

Intuit says projects are for users of QuickBooks Online Plus, QuickBooks Online Advanced or Intuit Enterprise Suite. Class tracking is available in QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced. Location tracking is only available in Plus and Advanced.

Plans as named on Intuit's pricing page, read Oct 24, 2026. The page lists Plus with "Track classes and locations (40)" and does not say what the 40 counts. Ask Intuit before you plan on it.

Plan prices change, and the pricing page showed a promotion in October 2026, so check it on the day you buy.

What is the difference between projects and classes in QuickBooks Online?

A project is one job with its own income and costs, so it answers what one flip made. A class is a business segment, such as a strategy, so it answers what a group of deals made together.

Intuit describes projects as a way to track income and costs for specific projects and measure profitability. It describes classes as a way to track income, expenses or profitability by business segment.

A class can be set once for the entire transaction or on each row. A project is selected on the bill, check or expense itself.

Which should a flipper use, projects or classes?

Projects, 1 for each property, because a flip is a job with a start, its own costs and a sale. Add classes only if one LLC runs more than one strategy and you want a report for each strategy.

Demo Flips LLC runs one strategy, so a class would add nothing there. Its 10 properties are its 10 projects.

If one LLC held both flips and wholesale deals, the 2 tags would work together like this:

In the sample books these deals sit in 2 separate LLCs, Demo Flips LLC and Demo Wholesale LLC. The shared file is shown only to explain the 2 tags. Which structure to use is a question for your attorney and your CPA.

How do you set up projects for your flips?

Turn on projects, create 1 project for each property, and select that project on every bill, check and expense for it. Keep business overhead off the projects, and reconcile every account each month.

1. 1Check that the company file is on QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced.
2. 2Turn on projects: go to Account and settings, then Advanced, and turn on "Organize all job-related activity in one place".
3. 3Create 1 project for each property, named the same way everywhere, for example "Project 7, 88 Imaginary Ln, Modesto".
4. 4On every bill, check and expense for that property, select its project in the Customer/Project field.
5. 5Leave business overhead off the projects: software, business insurance and marketing belong to the company, not to one property.
6. 6Reconcile every bank and card account to its statement each month, so each project total rests on complete books.

Intuit's help article names the setting "Organize all job-related activity in one place" and the Customer/Project field used to put a bill, check or expense on a project.

A project says which property a cost belongs to. The account says what kind of cost it is: rehab, interest, insurance or a closing cost. Our real estate chart of accounts lists the accounts a flip needs, for flips and rentals.

What should a project report show for one flip?

The sale price, the purchase cost, rehab, loan costs, holding and selling costs, and the profit. If the profit does not match what the closing statements and the costs add up to, a cost is missing or sits on the wrong project.

Here is Project 7 at 88 Imaginary Ln, Modesto, as its project report should read after the sale on Sep 9, 2026.

Demo Flips LLC is a sample company. Lines are rounded to the dollar, as in the sample per-deal report.

Until the sale, those costs sit on the balance sheet as the cost of the property. The project report and the balance sheet are 2 views of the same entries, so they must agree.

Rehab is the line that moved on Project 7: $72,050 spent against a $55,000 budget. We break that line down by trade, while the work is running, in job cost accounting for house flips.

What if the project total does not match the bank?

Then a cost is missing, doubled or tagged to the wrong project. Reconcile each account to its statement first, then check that every property cost carries a project. A project total rests on the books under it.

A rehab payment made on the business card and never tagged leaves the project short. The card statement still shows it, so the reconciliation is where it surfaces.

Our guide to books that don't match the bank finds the duplicate or the untagged item behind a difference.

How should a wholesaler set up QuickBooks Online?

The same way, with 1 project for each deal. The deposit, the closing costs and the fee all carry the deal's project. A deal that dies keeps its project, so its cost stays visible.

Here are the 4 deals of Demo Wholesale LLC on Sep 30, 2026, each read from its own project.

Demo Wholesale LLC is a sample company. Marketing of $7,900 for the year is not in these figures.

The deposit on Deal 4 is not a cost. It sits on the balance sheet, tagged to Deal 4, until the deal closes, is refunded or is forfeited.

Spreading marketing over the deals it produced is the next line down. We cover it in the wholesaling bookkeeping guide.

What if you run more than one LLC?

Each LLC gets its own company file, so its books stay separate. Money moving between your LLCs is then recorded in both files, and the 2 sides agree.

Intuit says each company you create requires its own separate paid subscription. The companies share a sign-in, but their data remains separate.

In the sample books, Demo Flips LLC and Demo Wholesale LLC would be 2 company files. A project lives inside one file, so each LLC keeps its own projects.

Do you need QuickBooks to work with a bookkeeper?

No. Flipper Bookkeeping works from your bank and card statements, so you need no bookkeeping software to work with us. If you already use QuickBooks, you can keep it.

A profit figure for every property, like the Project 7 table above, is the point of the setup on this page.