How do I apply a QuickBooks Class or Customer to an expense report?

When you send a report to QuickBooks, the export dialog lets you set a Class and a Customer for the whole export. You can also set them on an individual expense's row, which overrides the dialog for that row — so a report covering several grants or clients can still be coded correctly without splitting it up.

What Class and Customer mean in QBO:

• Class — a cost dimension like a restricted grant, department, program, or project. Example: "Literacy Grant 2026", "Marketing Dept", "Program – Youth Outreach".
• Customer — the funder, donor, client, or entity the expenses are associated with. Example: "City of Toronto", "United Way", "Client – Acme Corp".

The recommended workflow:

Ask your team (or clients) to submit one report per grant, donor, or project — so all the rows in a single report share the same Class and Customer. When you push that report to QuickBooks:

1. Click Send to QuickBooks on the report
2. Choose Smart routing or an advanced override; Class and Customer work with Purchases, reimbursement Bills, and vendor Bills
3. In the export dialog, pick the Class and Customer from the dropdowns
4. Confirm — every line item in the Bill or Purchase is tagged to that Class and Customer

That's it — nothing to fill in per row when a whole report shares one Class and Customer.

Setting Class and Customer per line

When a single report spans several grants, donors, or client projects, you don't have to split it. The expense sheet has a Class column and a Customer column — columns AC and AD, toward the right-hand end:

1. Open the expense sheet (the client's sheet, if you're an accountant working on their books)
2. Type the Class and/or Customer on the individual expense's own row
3. Push the report as usual

A value on the row wins over whatever you pick in the export dialog; rows you leave blank inherit the dialog's setting. So you can code the exceptions by hand and let the dialog cover everything else. This works with Purchases, reimbursement Bills, and vendor Bills.

Which approach should you use?

For nonprofits managing multiple restricted grants, or consultants billing to multiple clients, the simplest approach is still one report = one grant = one donor: set Class and Customer once at push time and no line-item work is needed. Reach for the per-line columns when splitting the report would be more work than typing a few cells — for example a mixed card statement where a handful of rows belong to a different restricted fund.

Classes and Customers are fetched live from your QBO company, so the dropdowns reflect its current records. If you add a new Class or Customer in QBO, it appears next time you open the export dialog.