Can I edit billable expense categories after it has been added to an invoice?

I can share some information about billable expenses added to your invoices, @TerriSR

For billable expenses, you must use an account of one of the following account types: expense, other expense, other current liabilities, other current assets, other assets, fixed assets, or COGS.

Updating the account of your billable expense won't affect your invoices. You can go to the Products and Services to update the income account of the item.

Here's how:

1. Go to Sales and select Product and Services.
2. Look for the product or service item and click Edit.
3. In the Income account section, choose the correct account.
4. Click Save and close.

In case you want to apply these changes to all of your recent transactions, simply mark the checkbox in the Also update this account in historical transactions when updating your income account.

For more details about this process, please see this article: Change the account for a product/service item.

Once you've received customer payments, follow this article on how to record them: Record invoice payments in QuickBooks Online.

Keep me posted if you have any other concerns about changing the accounts of your expenses and invoices. I'm always here to help. Have a great day ahead.

Thanks but this is not what I am asking you how to do.

I have billable expenses already in invoices.  I need to update the category of the expense in the invoices.  I already updated the category in the bills, I didn't think those updates come through to the invoice.  So now when I get a payment it is crediting a different category than the one on the bill because I updated the bill category.  How can I adjust the category for these billable expenses on the invoice side.

Welcome back, @TerriSR.

Allow me to provide information on how billable expenses work when converting them to an invoice.

The expense category selected in a billable expenses transaction won't show on the invoice upon converting it. Please know that the invoice is a sales transaction, and there isn't a way to choose or associate an expense category with it. 

If you want to show the expense category as your sales transaction, you can create a journal entry. However, I recommend seeking help from your accountant to guide you on which appropriate category or account to select. If you don't have an accountant, you can find one through this link.

You might want to review all your sales transactions made in QuickBooks Online. You can go to the Sales menu and select All Sales.

Please let me know if you need clarification about converting billable expenses to an invoice. I'll be standing by for your response, @TerriSR.

I understand this, so are you telling me if I entered the bills originally in the wrong category I need to delete them and the invoices to start all over again?

I'm here to share some information that can help you correct the account of your billable expense to invoices, @TerriSR.

As mentioned above, linking an existing invoice and expense is not possible. You can open the billable expense you mentioned then update the account or category. Let’s ensure that the amount remains the same while doing this.

Since you mentioned that you already have added the billable expense to the invoice, you can click the billable expense then change the account. I’ll show you how:

1. Open the invoice in question.
2. Select the little chain icon.
3. Click Billable Expense then, Yes.
4. On the Billable Expense page, change the account to the correct one.
5. Hit Save.

 
I’ve included some snippets below as your reference:

If you opt to void or delete transactions in QuickBooks Online, you can check out this article. This will help you learn their differences including how it will affect your account balances.

Here's an article that'll guide you when receiving and recording invoice payments.

Post your concerns or click the reply button for any follow-up questions about adding billable expense to an invoice. I'm always here to help. Keep safe!

Thanks for your response.  That is actually what I have been doing.  I was concerned that the payment for the invoice would not hit the same category on the P&L.  What I had to do to correct this was remove the billable expenses from my invoice and re-add them.  I checked the P&L and it shows the debit and credit to balance them out to zero.

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@TerriSR wrote:

I have entered bills with billable expenses.  I then added them to clients invoices for payment.  I need to change the categories of these billable expenses.  I did it on the bill side but not sure what I can do on the invoice side of things.

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Any help appreciated.

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if your customer plans to pay you in the future, you can create and send them an invoice. When the customer makes a payment on the invoice, you need to record the payment in QuickBooks.