I have a vendor with two expense categories (food and supplies). How to set that up?

Hi there, nikki_thailand.

At the moment, you can only assign one default expense category to a supplier. As a workaround, you can use the vendor's account number will group your vendor's list for easy reference.

For example, if you have three ATT accounts with different account numbers, you can set up the vendor names as follows.

• ATT #3245
• ATT #4567
• ATT #7765

Here's how to select an expense account for a vendor.

1. Go to the Expenses menu and select Vendors. 
2. Click the Edit menu.
3. Go to the Accounting section and choose an expense account under the Default expense account drop-down. 
4. Click Save.

This will auto-populate in the Category details section when creating a vendor transaction like bill, expense, or check. 

If you need a total balance amount for the vendors, you can run and customize the Vendor Balance Detail report. This report will give you the balances for every sub-vendor, and its total at the bottom.

If you don't want to set up suppliers using account numbers, you simply remove the expense account from their profile. Just select an expense account when you create an expense or bill.

In case you have duplicate suppliers, here's what you need to do: Merge duplicate accounts, customers, and vendors in QuickBooks Online.

Stay in touch with me by leaving a comment below if you need more help with assigning an expense category to a vendor. I'm always right here to help you.

Just curious about this.  As a recent migrator from QB Desktop, which had five allocations, why does Online only have one.  Another example is the health insurance invoice.  This would be allocated to (1) the company health and (2) the company dental expense accounts.  Making two vendors is a lot more work.

@Jim679 

The response from @MaryLandT doesn't make any sense to me.  There's no need to set up multiple vendors.  QB Desktop allowed you to set multiple default expense accounts, whereas QBO only has one.  In QBO, just add additional line items on the bill for the additional expense accounts.  You can list as many expense categories on a single bill as you need.

Thank you for the reply.

Yes, you are correct that you can add expense accounts as needed, however, why would you allow data entry staff the opportunity to create an error of mis-entering an A/N when you have the default providing the appropriate ones for the user.

Thank you for the reply.

Yes, you are correct that you can add expense accounts as needed, however, why would you allow data entry staff the opportunity to create an error of mis-entering an A/N when you have the default providing the appropriate ones for the user.