Why Do PO's Appear in Expense Transactions?

Anonymous · ‎January 02, 2019

Hi All

We're getting up and running with QuickBooks Online (QBO). Bit confused by its handling of Purchase Orders. We're an online store and a lot of our orders are fulfilled by distribution centres so we need to enter PO's. When a bill arrives we check it off against the PO to ensure everything matches up and is invoiced correctly.

My question is why do PO's show in the Expense Transactions page? Surely QBO should have a dedicated section for PO's as they are not actually an expense. Only the eventual bill raised by the supplier is an expense.

What happens is that we're getting a doubling up in our Expense Transactions screen because we have a PO and bill(s) that amount to the same thing. So the total shown is double what it actually is. I know I can filter, go into Suppliers, etc but I'm trying to understand the point of the Expense Transactions screen.

When we pay the bill that transaction will appear in the Expense Transactions screen so I assume the goal of QBO is to have the total move towards zero as bills are paid. This won't be possible while PO's are thrown in the mix.

Am I missing something? This seems completely wrong to me.

Assuming it's been badly implemented, can QB re-work this?

Thanks

Nick

IamjuViel · ‎January 02, 2019

Thanks for bringing this situation to my attention, @Anonymous.

QuickBooks Online is designed to become a one-stop shop for small business owners like you. Allow me to provide you with information to ensure you're able to record purchase orders in QuickBooks Online properly.

The expense transaction screen will display a list of all types of posting and non-posting expense transactions. This includes the Purchase orders which is a non-posting type.

Here is the workflow in using purchase order in QuickBooks Online:

Turn on purchase order.
Record a purchase order.
Apply purchase order to transactions.
Record payments.
Generate a purchase order reports.

By following the workflow above, avoids creating duplicate transactions may it by creating a bill or recording a payment. You can add more than one purchase order in one bill as well as apply multiple payment transactions on it.

If you wish to run a report of all of your posting expense transactions, kindly go to the Reports page and choose Transactions Details Report. You can customized this report to show only the posting transactions.

That's should do it! Keep me posted if you have other questions on how to manage purchase orders in QuickBooks. I'm always here to help.

Malcolm Ziman · ‎January 02, 2019

The total on the Expenses screen is mostly useless and misleading, and I don't pay attention to it. I use the Expenses screen to see transactions, not to get totals; I run Reports to get totals

Anonymous · ‎January 02, 2019

Hi @IamjuViel, thanks for your reply and I appreciate that PO's is a recent add-on to QBO.

I know that currently the Expense Transactions screen is an amalgamation of both Expenses and Purchase Orders (which aren't themselves actually expenses). However, it's wrong that they are merged together and currently makes the Expense Transactions screen pretty pointless for anyone using PO's. (Why even total all the lines together at the bottom of the page when using PO's makes it a meaningless figure?)

If QB simply removed PO's from this list and put them in their own tab it would instantly fix this issue (I assume putting it back to how the page was before PO functionality was added). It seems like quite a few people on here have expressed similar confusion and desire to have this simple change made.

Once removed, it would be good to have the improved Expense Transactions screen show a nice coloured box showing a total value for all overdue bills/expenses, similar to how your Invoices screen shows overdue invoices. At a glance without running reports or having to click on the Suppliers tab.

Could this fix be implemented relatively quickly?

Thanks

Nick

Anonymous · ‎January 02, 2019

Hi @Malcolm Ziman, we're in agreement. I couldn't find anyone that had actually detailed the reasons behind why bundling in PO's into the Expenses list was wrong so hopefully my other follow-up post fast-tracks a fix. I'm new to QB so have no idea how quickly issues are actually resolved.

Kristine Mae · ‎January 02, 2019

It's an interesting idea, Nick.

You can send your suggestion directly to our product engineers so this will be considered on our future updates. The more request a feature has, the bigger the possibility that it'll be included to the next update/release. You can do that by clicking the Gear icon, then choosing Feedback.

Of course, if you have other concerns, don't hesitate to post anytime. Have a good one!

Anonymous · ‎January 03, 2019

@Kristine Mae, thanks for hopefully getting this prioritised. I guess lots of older QBO users don't use POs since it's a relatively new feature. Those that do it appears just know to ignore the Expenses tab altogether, which isn't really very good.

Someone has already requested this feature but I had to struggle to find it:

https://feedback.qbo.intuit.com/forums/168199-quickbooks-online-feature-requests/suggestions/3135678...

It seems that the number of votes a request gets isn't really taken into account by QB anyway so hopefully this simple fix can just be implemented.

Kristine Mae · ‎January 03, 2019

Hey there again, Nick.

We're striving to give our customers the best features and services. Your suggestion/idea will help us improve our system. I'll also submit feedback to our management about it.

If there's anything else you need, don't hesitate to come back in the Community.

Malcolm Ziman · ‎January 03, 2019

@Anonymous wrote:

I'm new to QB so have no idea how quickly issues are actually resolved.

There are 41,776 requests some dating back to 2012, maybe before. I have the sense that they are not reacting to these requests

The request for the the misleading total on the Sales and Expenses screens is small fry IMO

https://feedback.qbo.intuit.com/

Malcolm Ziman · ‎January 03, 2019

@Anonymous wrote:

@Kristine Mae, thanks for hopefully getting this prioritised. I guess lots of older QBO users don't use POs since it's a relatively new feature.

ha ha good one, very funny

Anonymous · ‎January 04, 2019

I hope you're wrong because the lack of urgency Xero's programmers had when it came to fixing issues is the reason I avoided them. Their system had some pretty awful issues that we couldn't work around. (Customer name had to be unique and due to Xero's core programming that's a long-term issue.)

My other half is a senior programmer for a software development company that works primarily within the car industry. I've spoken to her about some of the issues with QBO and she can't understand why the little simple fixes aren't just carried out. They show that the software developers are actually listening and we as their customers get a warm and fuzzy feeling.

JessT · ‎January 04, 2019

Hi Nick,

I appreciate your feedback about how we handle issues in QuickBooks Online. I'd say the same thing as my colleague, Kristine Mae said, I'll bring this idea to our product development team.

They are actually responding to requests, and we already had changes and additional features in QuickBooks that were based on requests. Feel free to visit the Feedback Site to know what our engineers are up to at the moment.

We're just around if you have other questions.

Anonymous · ‎January 04, 2019

Thanks all. I'll keep my fingers crossed. :smileyhappy:

Kristine Mae · ‎January 04, 2019

You're always welcome, Nick.

Don't hesitate to visit us anytime if ever you have any concerns. Have a good one!

Malcolm Ziman · ‎January 04, 2019

@Anonymous wrote:
Customer name had to be unique

They show that the software developers are actually listening and we as their customers get a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Yes of course Customer name has to be unique, but you can separate the mandatory name from the print name. There is no customer number. The name is the unique identifier

No I don't get the warm and fuzzy feeling, sorry. It's just good-enough, which is good enough for me

Anonymous · ‎January 04, 2019

In Xero the customer name (i.e. Joe Bloggs) has to be unique. So I have to have numbers next to customer names? That's why I can't use Xero because it system can't work with that.

In QBO the display name has to be unique so we set it to the customer's account number. Perfect.

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Why Do PO's Appear in Expense Transactions?