QuickBooks Online customization: settings, labels, and limits
This page answers the customization questions that come up most often in QuickBooks Online. Some of them, like the first day of the work week, are settings you can change in a few clicks. Others, like per-line discount rates and a refresh button, are gaps only Intuit can close. Each section below says which kind of question you are dealing with and what to do about it.
Changing the first day of the work week
Weekly timesheets and time reports group hours by a work week, and the default week starts on Sunday. If your week runs Monday to Sunday, you can change the start day instead of reading every timesheet backwards.
- Select the Settings gear icon at the top right.
- Select Account and settings, then open the Advanced tab.
- Find the First day of work week preference and set it to Monday.
- Save the change, then select Done.
The section it sits in varies with the subscription, but the preference is listed by that name. It governs weekly time entry, so timesheets, weekly time reports, and weekly payroll calendars follow the new start day once it is saved.
A form that says “Pledges” instead of “Invoices”
“Pledges” is QuickBooks Desktop language. The nonprofit edition of Desktop can relabel invoices as pledges, along with customers and several other terms. QuickBooks Online has none of that: no pledge transaction type, no industry-specific terminology switch, and no statement charges.
So when a form in QuickBooks Online carries the word Pledges, the transaction itself is almost certainly a plain invoice wearing a renamed template. Custom form styles control the layout and wording of a form, including the title at the top, and that title can be edited. Your books are not affected either way.
- Select the Settings gear icon, then Custom form styles.
- Open the style currently assigned to invoices.
- Look in the header area for a title that was changed from Invoice to Pledges.
- Change the title back, or apply the standard style to your invoices instead.
New forms then go out under the standard title. The label lives in the template, not in your transaction data, so nothing needs to be re-entered.
Can you discount a single line on an invoice?
Not with a rate on the line itself. QuickBooks Online applies a discount to the subtotal of a transaction, so one discount covers every line on the form. There is no per-line discount column, and no setting that adds one.
Two workarounds hold up. You can type the reduced amount directly into the rate or amount field on that line; the net figure is correct even though the discount never shows as its own line. Or bill the item on a form of its own. There, the subtotal and the item amount are the same thing, so the standard discount line covers exactly that item.
A per-line discount column is a product feature rather than a setting, so the change has to come from Intuit.
Is there a refresh button in QuickBooks Online?
There isn’t one. Nothing inside the interface reloads the page you are on, which is noticeable the first time a list doesn’t show something you just saved.
Your browser does the job. F5, or Ctrl+R on Windows and Cmd+R on a Mac, reloads the page. A lighter option is to open another page from the left menu and come straight back. QuickBooks Online rebuilds a page’s data each time you land on it, so the round trip alone often refreshes what you need.
Getting a missing feature added
When a customization question ends with “QuickBooks Online doesn’t do that,” the change belongs to Intuit. The in-product route is the Feedback option under the Settings gear. An idea posted there goes to Intuit’s product team, and Intuit’s engineers review those suggestions as they plan updates.
We’re an independent firm, not the maker of QuickBooks Online, so adding a setting, a column, or a button is not something we can do. No third party can. What we can do is tell you which limits are real, which labels are only settings, and which workaround keeps your numbers right while you wait.