Delete customer with unbilled charges in QuickBooks Online

Learn how to delete a customer with unbilled charges in QuickBooks Online.

There are ways to delete a customer without getting “ Error: This customer cannot be deleted because there are unbilled charges for this customer.” Here’s how.

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You’re unable to delete a customer with unbilled charges if:

• Track expenses and items by customer and Make expenses and items billable preferences are disabled.
•  A charge, credit, or a billable expense attached to the customer you’re trying to delete has no invoice.

Learn how to:

• Check your Bills and expenses preferences
• Manage your customer's charge, credit, or billable expense charge
• Manage billable expense charges
• Batch mark billable expenses without invoicing

Step 1: Check your Bills and expenses preferences

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Account and Settings.
2. From the left menu, select Expenses.
3. Under Bills and expenses, check if the following are turned on:
   • Track expenses and items by customer
   • Make expenses and items billable
4. If not:
   1. Select Edit ✎.
   2. Turn on Track expenses and items by customer and Make expenses and items billable using the toggle switch.
   3. Select Save.

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Step 2: Manage your customer’s charge, credit, or billable expense charge

After turning on “Track expenses and items by customer” and “Make expenses and items billable” in your company settings, the next step is to manage the unbilled charges assigned to the customer you want to delete.

For open charge or credit, you can either create an invoice or delete it.

To create an invoice for a charge or credit:

1. Go to Sales, then select All sales (Take me there).
2. Find an open charge or credit.
3. Select Create invoice.
4. Check invoice then select Save.
   
   You can also do the following:

1. Go to Sales, then select All sales (Take me there).
2. Open a charge or credit.
3. On the More actions ▼ dropdown, select Convert to invoice.
4. Check the invoice then select Save.

To delete the charge or credit:

1. Go to Sales, then select All sales (Take me there).
2. Open a charge or credit.
3. On the More actions ▼ dropdown, select Delete.
4. Select Yes to confirm deletion.

Manage your customer's billable expense charge

If you see an open billable expense charge, you can create an invoice, mark it as non billable, or delete it.

To create an invoice for a billable expense charge:

1. Go to Sales, then select All sales (Take me there).
2. Find an open Billable Expense Charge.
3. Select Create invoice, then Save.

To mark the transaction as non-billable:

1. Go to Sales, then select All sales (Take me there).
2. Open the Billable Expense Charge.
3. To open the bill select Bill under marked as billable on this bill. Find the billable amount under Category or Item details.
4. Uncheck the box in the Billable column and remove the customer's name in the Customer/Project column.
5. Select Save and Close.

To delete the billable transaction:

1. Go to Sales, then select All sales (Take me there).
2. Open the Billable Expense Charge.
3. Select Bill under “Marked as billable on this bill”.
4. On the More actions ▼ dropdown, select Delete.
5. Select Yes, to confirm deletion.

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Batch mark billable expenses without invoicing

Notes:

• The billable expenses feature is only available for QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.
• This action only impacts Unbilled Expense charges. Unbilled Time charges are not effected.

Quickbooks will hide unbilled expenses and mark them as closed without having to create an invoice.

1. Go to any page.
2. Change the URL in the address bar to “qbo.intuit.com/app/managebillableexpense''.
3. Enter the appropriate date, then Save.

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