New QuickBooks Desktop Reports: Invoice Profitability by Customer and Item Profitability

In 2025, Intuit released two new reports for QuickBooks Desktop users: Invoice Profitability by Customer and Item Profitability. If you haven’t had a chance to familiarize yourself with either, now is a great time. While serving different functions, they both help business owners shift their thinking from “how much did we make?” to “how much did we keep?”

Invoice Profitability by Customer shows how much profit you earn on each invoice and customer by matching revenue with the actual costs tied to the work performed.

Item Profitability reveals which specific products or services generate the highest (or lowest) margins by comparing sales revenue directly to associated costs.

In this article, we’ll walk you through how to run an Invoice Profitability report and an Item Profitability report in QuickBooks Desktop, as well as help you understand how you can use these reports to gain greater insight into the financial health of your business.

Let’s get started.

How to run an Invoice Profitability by Customer report

You can run an Invoice Profitability by Customer report one of two ways.

Option 1 – from your main menu:

Navigate to Reports > Customers and Receivables > Invoice Profitability by Customer. 

Option 2 – from an individual invoice:

Navigate to Customers > Customer Center > Customers & Jobs. Find a customer whose invoice profitability you want to view by selecting a customer from the Active Customers dropdown OR by entering the name of the customer into the search field. Then, choose the row displaying the invoice, ensuring that “Invoice” is listed in the type column and the invoice number appears in the num column. Double-click on the row to open the invoice > go to Reports > select Invoice Profitability by Customer.

Understanding the Invoice Profitability by Customer report

When you run the Invoice Profitability by Customer report, you’ll be greeted with a lot of information. To get a more specific idea of your profitability, click Customize Report and reduce the fields you’re looking at to combinations like Cost vs Actual Cost, or Sales Price vs Actual Revenue.

The Invoice Profitability by Customer report can help you improve profitability by showing exactly how much money you keep (not just how much you bill) on each job or client relationship. By matching invoice revenue with the actual costs tied to labor, materials, subcontractors, and other expenses, you can gain valuable insight into the customers and projects that generate the strongest margins.

Use this report to:

• Identify underpriced work

• Spot scope creep

• Adjust markups

• Refine estimating processes

• Make informed decisions about pricing or client retention

Instead of relying on total sales as a performance measure, you can gain actionable insight into true gross profit, enabling smarter decisions that directly strengthen the bottom line.

How to run an Item Profitability report

To run the Item Profitability report, complete the following steps:Navigate to Reports > Jobs, Time & Mileage > select Item Profitability. A pop-up with a brief overview of the benefits of the report may appear; to skip this notice in the future, tick the checkbox next to “Don’t show me again” and select Close to continue and view the report.

Understanding the Item Profitability report

If you’d like to view and modify item setup data from the report directly, you can double-click the following fields: cost, sales price, % markup, and % margin.

An item (product or service) might show unexpected results if the cost and sales price you set differ from its actual value. This can happen for a couple reasons: 

• The preset cost or sales price in QuickBooks doesn’t reflect the true numbers behind that product or service. (Say, materials costs increased, but the item’s cost wasn’t updated)

• Price changes for labor time, overhead, discounts, or vendor prices aren’t accurately captured, making your item appear less profitable than it actually is.

As always, your reporting is only as accurate as your data. If you find any errors in a transaction, review the cost and sales price of the item. To do so directly from the report, double-click the cost or sales price of the item. A window will appear with that item’s details. Review the details from when you first made (or last changed) the item. You can also run an Item Profit Detail report to get a clearer picture of which transactions were recorded with a sales price or cost that differed from the item's setup. This will help you make more informed decisions about changing the cost or sale price of your item.

Use this report to:

• Increase or adjust pricing

• Discontinue low-margin or loss-generating products/services

• Negotiate better vendor pricing

• Adjust commission structures to incentivize selling higher-margin items

• Prioritize high-margin offerings in sales, marketing, and promotions

The Item Profitability report can help you improve profitability by revealing which products and services generate the strongest margins, uncovering underpriced or high-cost items, and giving you the insight needed to adjust pricing, control costs, and focus your sales efforts on what truly drives profit.

Closing Thoughts

Together, the Invoice Profitability by Customer and Item Profitability reports give you something every business owner needs: clarity. Instead of guessing which jobs, customers, products, or services are carrying your business, you can rely on clear data to guide your decisions.

When reviewed consistently, these reports empower you to price more confidently, control costs more effectively, and focus your time and resources where they generate the greatest return. Profitability doesn’t improve by accident—it improves when you measure it, understand it, and act on it. These tools give you the insight to do exactly that.