4 Ways to Find Annual Cost in QuickBooks

Finding annual cost in QuickBooks can feel messy when receipts, invoices, and bank activity are scattered. You need clear yearly totals and a reliable way to reconcile with bank statements.

This article shows four practical QuickBooks methods to pull annual cost, calculate yearly expenses, and reconcile totals. I’ll cover reports, date filters, exports, and reconciliation checkpoints so your books match your bank.

Table of Contents

• Use QuickBooks's UI
• Use Torii
• Use QuickBooks's API
• Use Claude (via MCP)

Use QuickBooks’s UI

Here, you’ll use QuickBooks Online’s Reports to pull the total annual cost for your business or by vendor.

Open Reports

• In QuickBooks Online, click Reports in the left menu.
• In the search box, type Profit and Loss or Expenses by Vendor Summary and pick the report you want.

Get company-wide annual cost with Profit and Loss

• Open the Profit and Loss report.
• Click Customize.
• Set the report period:
  • Choose Last Year or pick Custom and enter your fiscal year start and end dates (for example, 01/01/2024 to 12/31/2024).
• Adjust columns if you want:
  • Under Rows/Columns, set Columns to Total only or Years to see the full-year total.
  • Run the report.
  • Look for the Total expenses line (it shows the full annual cost). That number is your company’s annual expense amount.

Get annual cost by vendor

• Open the Expenses by Vendor Summary report.
• Click Customize.
• Set the report period the same way you did above.
• Optionally filter to specific vendors or expense accounts:
  • Use the Filter section to check the vendors or accounts you want included.
  • Run the report.
  • The report lists each vendor’s total for the year and a grand total at the bottom.

Drill down or verify individual accounts

• From the Profit and Loss report, click any expense amount to open the detail transactions for that account and year.
• Review, export, or print the transaction list if you need a line-by-line check.

Export or save the report

• To share or keep records, click Export and choose Export to Excel or Export to PDF.
• If you’ll run this every year, click Save customization to reuse the same settings later.

QuickBooks’ reports are the simplest way to see annual costs. If you need totals by account, vendor, or custom date ranges, pick the corresponding report and set the dates the same way above.

Use Torii

Instead of digging through QuickBooks itself, you can use Torii, a SaaS Management Platform, to determine the annual cost associated with QuickBooks. SMPs combine all your SaaS subscriptions in one dashboard, giving you a single source of truth for every tool you use.

To surface the annual cost from QuickBooks inside Torii, do the following:

1. Sign up for Torii

Contact Torii and request a complimentary two-week proof-of-concept.

2. Connect your expense accounts & contracts to Torii

After your Torii account is active, link your finance systems (for example, Coupa or QuickBooks). This sync will import QuickBooks charges into Torii so you can see its cost.

You can also upload contracts directly to Torii; their AI will pull out the subscription pricing automatically.

Here are more instructions for the QuickBooks integration.

3. Search for QuickBooks within Torii

Use the search box at the top of the Torii dashboard to look up QuickBooks. That opens the QuickBooks app page in Torii, where you’ll find details like license counts, total spend, upcoming renewal dates, and more.

Or, chat with Eko

Torii’s AI helper, Eko, can retrieve QuickBooks data inside Torii using simple natural-language chat. Click the Eko icon in the bottom-right corner of the dashboard, ask for the QuickBooks information you need, and Eko will display the results in the chat window.

Use QuickBooks’s API

Here you’ll use QuickBooks Online’s API (the Reports endpoint) to pull a Profit & Loss for a one-year date range and read the “Total Expenses” value. This gives you the annual cost without touching the QuickBooks UI.

Prepare: have an OAuth2 access token and the company (realm) ID

• Your requests need:
  • Authorization header: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>
  • The company realmId in the request path
  • Accept: application/json

Example curl is:

curl -X GET "https://quickbooks.api.intuit.com/v3/company//reports/ProfitAndLoss?start_date=2024-01-01&end_date=2024-12-31&accounting_method=Accrual" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer " \
-H "Accept: application/json"

Call the ProfitAndLoss report for the year

• Use the Reports endpoint and set start_date and end_date to cover the 12-month period you want.
• Include accounting_method if you need cash vs accrual results.
• Optionally add minorversion to match any recent API response shape changes.

Read the response and extract the expense total

• The JSON response includes a Rows object containing multiple Row entries (income, expenses, totals).
• Look for the row that labels the aggregated expenses. Typical markers to check:
  • A Row whose ColData text equals “Total Expenses” or a grouped “Expenses” section.
  • The numeric value is usually in the last ColData entry for that row.
  • If the report was customized and no single “Total Expenses” row appears, sum rows under the Expenses group.

Example minimal parsing in JavaScript (adjust to your language):

const resp = /* parsed JSON response from the Reports call */;
const rows = resp.Rows && resp.Rows.Row ? resp.Rows.Row : [];
let totalExpenses = null;
for (const r of rows) {
    const cols = r.ColData  [];
    const label = cols[0] && cols[0].value ? cols[0].value : '';
    const value = cols[cols.length - 1] && cols[cols.length - 1].value ? cols[cols.length - 1].value : null;
    if (label && /Total Expenses/i.test(label)) {
        totalExpenses = parseFloat(value.replace(/[^0-9.\-]/g, ''));
        break;
    }
}
// Fallback: sum individual expense lines if no "Total Expenses" row found
if (totalExpenses === null) {
    let sum = 0;
    for (const r of rows) {
        const cols = r.ColData  [];
        const label = cols[0] && cols[0].value ? cols[0].value : '';
        const value = cols[cols.length - 1] && cols[cols.length - 1].value ? cols[cols.length - 1].value : null;
        if (/Expense/i.test(label) && value) {
            sum += parseFloat(value.replace(/[^0-9.\-]/g, ''));
        }
    }
    totalExpenses = sum;
}
console.log('Annual total expenses:', totalExpenses);

Handle common API responses

• If you get 401, the access token likely expired. Use your OAuth2 refresh flow to get a new token and retry.
• If the report JSON shape is different, inspect resp.Rows to find which Row holds totals; QuickBooks report responses can vary by minorversion and custom settings.
• If you need cost of goods sold instead of total operating expenses, look for “Cost of Goods Sold” in the same report.

Tips and alternatives within the QuickBooks API

• If you want expenses broken down by account for the year, run the same ProfitAndLoss request and read the account-level rows under the Expenses section.
• For very specific transaction-level sums (checks, bills, purchases), use the Query endpoint and sum matching transactions by date and account, but that requires handling multiple transaction types.

That’s the path: request ProfitAndLoss for the year, find the Total Expenses row (or sum expense rows), and use the numeric value as your annual cost.

Use Claude (via MCP)

You can also retrieve this data directly from Claude using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Claude is Anthropic’s conversational AI and an alternative to ChatGPT.

To pull annual cost from QuickBooks via Claude, do the following:

1. Set up Torii

Complete the earlier Torii steps to link your QuickBooks account with Torii.

Then open Settings and generate a new API key.

2. Set up MCP in Claude

See the Torii MCP instructions for details, and this blog post for background.

Install the Claude Desktop app, then add the following to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "Torii MCP": {
            "command": "env",
            "args": [
                "TORII_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY",
                "npx",
                "@toriihq/torii-mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Create that API key from Torii’s Settings page.

3. Chat with Claude

Once configured, Claude can query your Torii environment. Ask it to inspect QuickBooks and report things like total licenses, yearly spend, upcoming renewal dates, and other billing details.