Negative invoice

Hi cls23,

It's great to have you join us in the QuickBooks community! I'll help you sort this out.

Jobs change between estimates and invoices all the time. The great thing about estimates in QuickBooks is you can use them to create invoices through progress invoicing if things stay the same or simply create an invoice without the estimate listing the material actually used for the job.

It sounds like you haven't actually received a payment for the job from this customer yet. Because of that, you wouldn't create a credit memo on their account. Estimates are non-posting transactions (meaning they don't affect your books), so creating a credit would offset their balance and give them a credit they don't need.

I hear what you're saying about your customer wanting a transaction that shows them both what the estimate had and then what is actually being invoiced for the job. There isn't a way to enter all of those items on a single transaction. A workaround that you can consider is using the Customer message section of the invoice to outline what was originally entered on the estimate and what the difference is.

I hope that helps. Have a good evening.

@cls23 

Well I disagree with @LauraAB , you can show changes in QBO.

A quote (estimate in QBO) is non posting so you can show anything you want. ie

Job, blah blah, $3,333 will show at the bottom as a total of the blah blah items

then add the change items
widget A, qty -80, $1, total -$80
widget B, qty -1, $1, total -$1
widget C, qty 50, $0.40, total $20
widget D, qty 1, $5, total $5.00
sub total, -$105

and the bottom number to the total estimate will reduce by 105 and show a total of $3,228