QBO Essentials vs Plus

Hello rshan,

I have the details you need regarding the impact on billable expenses when downgrading. 

The downgrade won't severely impact the transactions already booked. There are several things that will happen to the billable expense transactions. 

The first thing you will notice is that you won't be able to use the Billable Expense feature. Though, the invoices, expenses, and the Billable Expense Charge transactions will still appear on your books. 

To further elaborate, those expenses marked as billable will no longer have the customer mapped to them. Plus, the Billable column will disappear. The Billable Expense Charge transactions are still mapped between the expense and the sale forms, though.

Before downgrading, you might want to check this article for the details: Upgrade or downgrade your QuickBooks Online subscription (expand the Downgrade your subscription section). 

When you're ready to downgrade, you can follow the steps from the article I've hyperlinked. 

As for your second question, when you downgrade to Online Essentials, you won't lose any of your invoices and payments. Your data will remain intact, including your invoices and payment history. 

Meanwhile, I've also added this article as your guide in ensuring your accounts match your bank and credit card statements: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online.

Let me know if you have any additional inquiries regarding the features in QuickBooks Online.

Hello Adrian_A,

Thanks very much for the prompt and thorough response to my questions. The feature in question, however, is the "Track billable hours by customer" feature, not the "Billable expense" feature, which is explicitly called out with a green check mark as a feature that is included in the Essentials version and is also explicitly called out as a feature that is not available in the Essentials version. See screen shots that illustrate the issue.

Thanks again for your assistance,

rshan

We appreciate your input, rshan. 

I'll share further insights about the available features when downgrading QuickBooks Online (QBO) plan from Plus to Essentials so you can decide which one suits best for your business.

From your description, I can tell that you've encountered the scenario while trying to downgrade your QuickBooks plan from Plus to Essentials. There are certain accounting features that aren't available when you do so. 

For the time being, recording billable expenses is available in the Plus and Advanced versions. With the Essentials plan, you can track billable time by job or track and invoice your billable time.

To help you choose a new plan and see which subscription level is right for you, you can visit this page: Plans for every kind of business.

Additionally, there's a usage limit for each subscription level in QBO. These apply to how many billable users, chart of accounts, classes, locations, and tags you can add. If you wish to learn more about them, please see this article: Learn about usage limits in QuickBooks Online.

I'm all ears if you have other feature and account management concerns in QBO. You can drop a comment below, and I'll gladly help. Take care, rshan.