Is there a way to pull a PNL that shows expenses but not money received applied to those expenses?

@suzannek1 

Correct me if I'm not understanding this.  You incur expenses that you bill your clients for and then you assign the items on the customer invoice to the same expense account, thereby zeroing out the expense on your P&L?  Now, you want to see a list of all of those expenses?    

I assume you're using the billable expense option on the vendor bills?  If so, I think the best you can do is run a Transaction List with Splits report and add a column for Billable.  You would still need to total the billable expenses manually/in Excel.  Maybe someone else has a better idea and can chime in.   

Thank you for sharing the details of your concern, @suzannek1. I'm here to share more information about the Profit and Loss in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

Before we start, I'd like to clarify if you've applied or activated the billable when creating expenses? May I also ask for a screenshot wherein it shows zero on your expenses. Any additional information would be greatly appreciated.

To give you a heads up, the expense account will show as zero if you linked the same expense account to your invoice items. To know how to get this posted to your expense account accurately, I recommend seeking help from your accountant.

I'm sharing you this article to help you find the missing transactions in Profit and Loss report: Find the missing income and expense transactions in your Profit and Loss report.

In addition, you can also customize reports in QBO to filter and easily show the specific accounts. 

Please let me know if you have more question about pulling up a profit and loss that shows expenses. I'm always here to help.

@ZarahHillarey_T 

"To give you a heads up, all expenses created that enables the billable option and paid by your clients will not be zero out on the record, instead the amount added will show the same on the Profit and Loss section."

Yes, they will, if the invoice items are linked to the same expense accounts.  It would be great if you had a basic understanding of how QB works to be able to help your customers with...QB.  Not trying to be rude but if you have nothing to add or, worse, you give your customer bad information, you're just confusing your customer.    

Hello.  You are correct about what I am looking for.  However, I cannot use the billing expense option.  Too many expenses.  I need to group them and it doesn't work with the option.  Really annoying.  

Currently I am working with Transaction by account. 

Hello,

I cannot use the billable option.  I cannot send an invoice with 200+ separate expenses.  The client would go ballistic!  I group them together by account for the client so the invoice is manageable and legible.  

The issue with the PNL is that it zeroes out the expense with the reimbursement so a report is "0" for all dates and just wrong for a custom date range.

I am working with a Transaction by Account report.

@suzannek1 

"I cannot use the billable option. I cannot send an invoice with 200+ separate expenses. The client would go ballistic! I group them together by account for the client so the invoice is manageable and legible."

I'm not sure if you're aware but you can mark 200+ separate expenses as billable to a customer, select them when you create an invoice and then modify the invoice to include as many or as few line items as you want.  That allows you to invoice the customer like you currently do but still have the ability to track billable expenses.  Just because you have 200+ billable expenses doesn't mean you have to invoice them for 200+ line items.      

"The issue with the PNL is that it zeroes out the expense with the reimbursement so a report is "0" for all dates and just wrong for a custom date range."

I assume you have a reason for doing it that way.  The other option is to assign income to the invoice when you bill for those expenses and, instead of zeroing out the expense, it will record income to offset the expense.  Same effect on net income, it just allows easier tracking.  Forgive me if you know this already.  

I am not following on the invoicing.  If there are 25 taxis billable to client, I total them from the pnl as one line item, not 25.  I did not see a way to do this with the billable option.  

I do not zero out the expense.  the expense is coded to say 5606.  When I do the invoice I bill as 5606.  That zeroes it out on the pnl.  I am thinking that is why the numbers on the pnl are zero of wrong. 

@suzannek1 

"I am not following on the invoicing. If there are 25 taxis billable to client, I total them from the pnl as one line item, not 25. I did not see a way to do this with the billable option."

If you mark the expenses as billable, you can add the expenses to an invoice (one click) and then delete the lines and group them by account as you're currently doing.  This way, at least you have a record of what expenses were billable which was the original reason you started this discussion, correct?  Even easier is to code your invoice to an income account(s) (see below).  

"I do not zero out the expense. the expense is coded to say 5606. When I do the invoice I bill as 5606. That zeroes it out on the pnl. I am thinking that is why the numbers on the pnl are zero of wrong. 

Agreed.  When you code the invoice to the same expense account as the bill that's what zeroing out the expense is.  There's still a record of it of course but you reversed it (zeroed it out).  Why not just code the invoice to an income account?  That way, your expenses don't get zeroed out and you can use the expenses off your P&L to get your average monthly spend.  

For the billable expenses, I tried that.  It did not mark them as invoiced when deleted.  I know what is billable by the code.  And no, that is not what I am trying to achieve.    The report I am trying to create has to do with tracking cash flow.  

As far as coding on invoices, we want them to zero out on the pnl per client as a way to make sure that we didn't miss any of them and also if there are outstanding expenses, we have a number to compare them to.  We do not want these number in income as it is not really income.    Only our fees are income.  Yes, I know any money received is income but it is going against expenses and it makes it cleaner.  

A transaction report seems a better way to find the information for cash flow purposes. But I really appreciate all the information. 

I tried running the report you suggested but nothing is showing up in the billable column.  If I click on an expense it is indeed marked as billable.  What is making the billable column not work?

Hello,

There is nothing amiss with the expense accounts.  The billable expenses are pass throughs.  Once we are reimbursed it is not our expense.  Our income is coded to specific income accounts.

What we are trying to do is pull a monthly report of client expenses currently not reimbursed yet to determine how much monthly expenditure we are doing on our client's behalf before all invoices are paid.  

Th pnl did not seem to work when it pulled it by client.  Plus it did not break down monthly.