Stop Guessing, Start Tagging: How to Make QuickBooks® Online Work Smarter for You

If you’ve ever wanted to slice and dice your financial data in QuickBooks® Online without changing your chart of accounts or creating new classes or locations, you’re in luck. The Tags feature in QuickBooks® Online offers an intuitive, flexible way to track transactions across any category you choose—clients, events, sales channels, campaigns, or even employee projects. And in 2025, Tags are more powerful (and user-friendly) than ever.

Tags are customizable labels that you can apply to transactions, like invoices, expenses, bills, or bank transfers, to help you track the information that’s most important to your business. Unlike Classes or Locations, Tags don’t affect how your books are categorized for tax purposes. Instead, they provide a custom reporting layer that’s entirely your own.

Think of them as digital sticky notes you can sort, filter, and analyze. Want to know how much you spent on your summer marketing campaign? Tag every related transaction with "Summer 2025" and pull a report in seconds.

QuickBooks® Online's Tags are particularly helpful for small business owners, consultants, creatives, and firms that don’t want to overcomplicate their general ledger but still need meaningful insights. Here are just a few benefits:

• Custom tracking without cluttering your chart of accounts
  You don’t need to create dozens of new accounts to track temporary campaigns or event-based expenses.
  
  
• No limits on creativity
  You can tag by project, client, department, job title, marketing funnel—whatever’s relevant to your business.
  
  
• Detailed insights with Tag Group reports
  Group similar tags together and run summary reports to see how much you're spending or earning across those categories.
  
  
• Greater visibility into business drivers
  Identify trends, compare performance across tags, and use that data to make smarter decisions.

As of this year, QuickBooks® has improved the user interface for Tags, making it easier to apply them in bulk and filter them in real-time reports. You can now add tags directly from the Banking tab during transaction review, and Tag Group reports have become more detailed, offering filter options and exportable views that can easily be shared with your team or accountant.

1. Go to the Banking or Transactions menu in your QuickBooks® Online dashboard.
2. Select the Tags tab.
3. Click New Tag Group to create a group (e.g., “Events” or “Clients”).
4. Within the group, add individual tags like “Tradeshow 2025” or “Client X.”
5. When entering a new transaction (expense, invoice, etc.), simply apply the relevant tag or tag group.

You can use multiple tags across transactions, but each transaction can only have one tag per group.

• A boutique marketing firm uses tag groups like “Campaigns” and “Clients” to track profitability across different projects without creating sub-customers or additional income accounts.
  
  
• A small construction company tags expenses by job site, helping them identify which builds are the most cost-efficient.
  
  
• A solo entrepreneur who sells on Etsy, Shopify, and in-person at markets uses tags to track sales by channel for better planning and pricing.

Tags offer an elegant way to track what's important to you, without reengineering your books. They give you added control and insight without complicating your accounting process.

If you're not using Tags in QuickBooks® Online yet, now’s the time to start. With just a little setup, you’ll gain visibility into the metrics that matter and make more informed decisions for your business.