Expense Reimbursement - noting paid in QB Online

Greetings, @KAP2.

I'm delighted to help walk you through in reimbursing your employee's in QuickBooks.

To record the payments, let's create a journal entry. Here's how:

1. Click the Plus Icon.
2. Choose Journal Entry.
3. On the first distribution line, enter the following:
   1. Choose the account used for tracking Employee reimbursement (Additional Pay).
   2. Enter how much you paid to the employee and the Description.
   3. Select the name of the employee.
4. On the second distribution line,  enter the following:
   1. Choose Accounts Payable on the Account column.
   2. Enter the amount of the bill or vendor invoice and the Description.
   3. Select the name of the Vendor.
5. Click Save and Close.

That should do it! This will allow you to record the vendor payments in QuickBooks.

Always feel free to get back to us here in the Community if you have other questions about recording the reimbursements you've to your employees. I'm always here to help.

Thank you.  If I do this, will it show each expense report as being paid in QB?  I want to be sure a journal entry will accomplish this and show the expense reports that are reimbursed through payroll as paid.  Will the Transaction Detail report show them as paid so I know which ones to pay next?

Also, I assume the first distribution line (employee reimbursement) showing amount that is paid will be a credit and the second distribution line (accounts payable) and the list of expense reports will be debit.

Will a journal entry show the vendor expense report as paid?  When an employee enters an expense report it posts to QB as a vendor expense.  We reimburse the employee through payroll (additional pay) and then need to mark the vendor expense as paid.  Will the journal entry do this?

Glad to hear again from you, @KAP2.

I can provide you with additional information about recording and applying bill payments.

To ensure the vendor's balance will be cleared and the expense will be marked as paid, the account used in recording the bill should be the same with the account used in paying the employee's reimbursement or additional pay.

Feel free to get back to me here in the Community if you have other questions about managing  your transactions. I'm here to help.

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@IamjuViel wrote:

Glad to hear gain from you, @KAP2.

 

To ensure the vendors balance will cleared and the expense will be mark as paid, the account used in recording the bill should be the same with the account used in paying the employee's reimbursement or additional pay. 

 

 

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 This is (as usual) wrong.

If the account used in recording the bill is the same with (sic) the account used in paying the employee's reimbursement, then there will be a situation where there is no expense on the P&L, just an expense called "reimbursement".

And if they followed this advice:

"On the first distribution line, enter the following:
Choose the account used for tracking Employee reimbursement (Additional Pay)."

then assuming this is a credit, which it must be, then the  account used for tracking Employee reimbursement, will be debited, then credited, then debited, leaving an open balance.

The correct answer is to use whatever expense the reimbursement was for, Eg, Travel expense, on the Bill, as  was probably done anyhow

@KAP2 

Yes, credit the account used for tracking Employee reimbursement, and debit Accounts Payable, in the JE. You may have to also create a zero Bill Payment to apply the debit to the Bill.

You can also bypass the Bill and just create a reimbursement account in Payroll Settings for whatever expense the reimbursement was for, Eg, Travel expense, and other reimbursement  types for other expenses like Uniform expense, etc.  This will be easier, but if you are on the accrual method, then you may not accrue the expense at the right time

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@Anonymous wrote:
Your entry method makes this hard to do and is forcing duplication. Ideally the payroll reimbursement would post as a vendor payment - but I dont think thats allowable in QB payroll or AP. So instead the payroll item will have to link to a temporary bank or CC account, and then youll then have to manually make 'bill payments' to match.
Instead - If you posted the employee reimbursable expense to special 'credit cards' (instead of AP) then you could likely link a payroll item to the CC and close the loop in one step.

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bank or CC account not allowed either; just expense accounts allowed.  Thus the need for a JE, if the expense needs to be accrued with a Bill. If no accrual is necessary, then multiple reimbursements can be created for different expense accounts, as I explained in my answer

So it doesn't appear that there is an easy way for an employee to enter an expense report (that posts in QB Online), have it reimbursed via payroll, yet code the expense report/vendor invoice as paid. Trying to pay via payroll versus cutting a check and mailing it to employees.  I guess that's the cleanest/simplest way to go.