Estimate vs actual in QuickBooks Desktop, and your quote win rate

What the built-in report does

It lists each job with estimated and actual cost and revenue, and the differences. For a contractor tracking a job against its budget it is the right report.

It only sees estimates that turned into invoices on the same job. Quotes that went nowhere are invisible, and there is no field for why a quote was lost.

Where win rate lives

QuickBooks holds every estimate you wrote. Won, lost or still open, and the reason, is in your head or in a sheet. Put the estimate report and that sheet in the same database and both questions answer themselves. Most owners do not keep the sheet yet. It gets built at the start, from memory and the invoice numbers, and kept from then on.

Three questions in a row from a fictional company’s estimates.

select year, rep_name,
       sum(case when status = 'Won' then 1 else 0 end) as won,
       sum(case when status = 'Lost' then 1 else 0 end) as lost,
       round(100.0 * sum(case when status = 'Won' then 1 else 0 end)
             / sum(case when status in ('Won', 'Lost') then 1 else 0 end)) as win_pct
from v_estimates
where rep in ('MJ', 'DK', 'TR', 'SL') and year in ('2024', '2025', '2026')
group by year, rep_name
order by year, win_pct desc

select year, lost_reason,
       count(*) as quotes_lost,
       round(sum(total)) as value_lost
from v_estimates
where status = 'Lost' and year in ('2024', '2025', '2026')
group by year, lost_reason
order by year, value_lost desc

select num, date, customer, rep_name, round(total) as quoted
from v_estimates
where status = 'Open' and date < '2026-04-28'
order by date

Northgale Building Products is a fictional company. Every name, figure and supplier on this page is made up, built to behave like a real three-and-a-half-year QuickBooks Desktop file so we can show real screens without showing anyone’s real numbers. Data as of the 2026-07-27 refresh; the last invoice in the file is dated 2026-07-24.

Short answers

• Does QuickBooks Desktop track quote win rate?No. It stores estimates but never asks whether one was won or lost.
• Which QuickBooks Desktop versions have Estimates vs Actuals?Premier and Enterprise. Pro has estimates but not the job-costing reports.
• What if we do not track lost quotes today?Nobody does at first. Won ones are found from the invoices. Open and lost ones are tracked from the week the sheet exists.

Related questions

• Sales rep commission report in QuickBooks Desktop
• On-time delivery report from QuickBooks
• Your systems, joined