Billable Expenses

Welcome back to the Community, RyanC3PO.
 

I can certainly understand how an ability to work with billable expenses in a Simple Start subscription could be useful and have submitted a suggestion about it as of today.
 

You can also submit your own feature requests while signed in.
 

Here's how:

1. Use the Gear (⚙️) icon.
   
2. Click Feedback.
   
3. Enter your suggestions and/or comments.
4. Hit Next.
   
5. Choose Skip and send message.
6. The available drop-down menu can be used to pick an appropriate category.
7. Select Send message.
   

Your feedback's definitely valuable to Intuit. It will be reviewed by our Product Development team and considered in future updates. You can stay up-to-date with the latest news about your product by reviewing Intuit's Product Updates webpage.
 

As a workaround, you have an option to upgrade whenever you'd like. Our Plus and Advanced subscription levels both include a feature for billable expenses.
 

Please feel welcome to send a reply if there's any additional questions. Have a lovely day!

Hey Zach. Thanks so much for the response. Just curious. Do you know what the thinking is in adding billable expenses at the Plus level?  Per the website, the Plus level increase users to 5, adds inventory tracking and adds tracking project profitability. Billable expenses don’t fit in any of those categories.

The work around adds a lot of steps, and just upgrading for that feature is not in my budget.  Really feels like small business aren’t really be considered. 

I filled out a feature request but doubt it will get much attention there.

Honestly I was hoping to generate some discussion here but I don’t know how many small business owners have time to be on here for general discussion.

Thanks for getting back to us, RyanC3PO.

Allow me to join this thread and provide clarification about adding billable expenses.

The billable expense feature is only available in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced. You can use this article as an additional reference: How to Enter Billable Expenses.

To be able to avail of the said feature, you might consider upgrading your account to a higher version.

 Here's how you can upgrade your QBO subscription:

1. Click the Gear icon on the top menu.
2. Select Account and Settings.
3. Choose the Billing & Subscription menu.
4. In the QuickBooks Online section, click Upgrade. If you don't see it, you’re already using the plan with the most features.
5. Choose the plan you want, and click Upgrade.
6. Confirm your payment information and click Save.

Keep your post coming if you need more help. Have a great day!

Did you not read my reply?  I acknowledged that it wasn’t offered at the Simple Start level and stated that it wasn’t in my budget to upgrade to the Plus level. That would be almost $700. 
I’m a sole proprietor just trying to get by. Plus is designed for bigger companies with multiple users. 

Is this not a community forum? Is it not OK to ask questions about that product and what others think?

To me it doesn’t make any sense for Billable Expenses not tied to invoicing. Billable expenses don’t have any other purpose. And, invoicing is clearly part of the Simple Start level.

I was hoping to to generate some discussion and possibly hear what other sole proprietor and small businesses are doing.

Note to other small businesses needing the Billable Expense feature.  It is still available on Desktop Pro and Desktop Pro can still be purchased.  It's hard to find on the website but it is still available.

I am in the same boat. Small business owner using the Essentials QB because I don't see any sense in paying hundreds of dollars more for the one feature I need. I sure could use the billable expense feature as I am in IT and regularly purchase job materials for jobs/projects that my clients will reimburse me for. I don't carry inventory, so I don't use COGS. I am really trying to figure out how to log these purchases into QBO essentials correctly so they don't count as sales income. 

I'm determined to improve your experience with our products, @RBLoom.

I understand that every dollar counts when it comes to running a business. No worries, I have a solution for you to record your clients' reimbursements in QuickBooks Online without upgrading your subscription.

You can record client reimbursements using Bank Deposit or Journal Entry. I'd recommend speaking with an accountant first. They can advise you on which accounts to use in the Debit and Credit sections.

Once you've determined which account to use, follow the instructions at the following links:

• Record and make bank deposits in QuickBooks Online
• Create a journal entry in QuickBooks 

Moreover, visit the articles below on how to manage expenses and combine multi transactions in QuickBooks:

• Deposit payments into the Undeposited Funds account in QuickBooks Online
• Enter and manage expenses in QuickBooks Online

I’ll be around if you have other concerns about managing your transactions in QuickBooks. Post a reply, and I’ll swing back into action. Keep safe.

Ryan,

I'm a couple years late to this conversation, but I appreciate your inquiry because it's the same issue I've been struggling with as a small business bookkeeper. I completely agree with your stance on the issue of the necessity of being able to make expenses billable on the intro-level QB online. I have felt very frustrated in not being able to use the Billable feature and serve my customers better in this area. I consider it a must have, and a very base action at the core, when it comes to bookkeeping and tracking. Small businesses are not being represented in this specific area. Like you said, it doesn't fit the budget of a small businesses to upgrade in order to be able to use only one additional feature. A feature that would cut back on the hassle with much finagling on our end, in order to make the info that we need represented correctly fit into the program.

Ryan,

I'm a couple years late to this conversation, but I appreciate your inquiry because it's the same issue I've been struggling with as a small business bookkeeper. I completely agree with your stance on the issue of the necessity of being able to make expenses billable on the intro-level QB online. I have felt very frustrated in not being able to use the Billable feature and serve my customers better in this area. I consider it a must have, and a very base action at the core, when it comes to bookkeeping and tracking. Small businesses are not being represented in this specific area. Like you said, it doesn't fit the budget of a small businesses to upgrade in order to be able to use only one additional feature. A feature that would cut back on the hassle with much finagling on our end, in order to make the info that we need represented correctly fit into the program.

Has anyone come up with a work around for this issue. Perhaps a manual way to manage billable expenses without upgrading to a plan that costs twice as much? If so, please advise.

Or, is there a desktop version that still supports this feature.

Thanks for joining this thread, tlewis133. Let me provide some information about billable expenses in QuickBooks.

In QuickBooks Online, the option to record billable expenses is only available in the Plus and Advanced plans. However, you can consider upgrading your subscription to access this functionality.

Furthermore, you can use the billable expense feature in all versions of QuickBooks Desktop. If you want to mark all expenses as billable, you can do so in your company preferences.

Here's how to do that:

1. On the top menu, navigate to Edit.
2. Select Preferences.
3. Go to Time & Expenses.
4. On the Company Preferences tab, tick the Mark all expenses as billable.
5. Click OK.

You can also manually mark an expense as billable when creating a bill by selecting a Customer:Job and ticking the Billable? column on a line item.

I'm leaving this article on creating an expense report for future tracking purposes: Expense Report.

Come back to this thread if you have any other concerns about billable expenses in QuickBooks, tlewis133. I'll be around to address them for you.

Quickbooks does not care about small business!

Who does more work T&M than small businesses?  It's absolutely ridicules that this feature was taken away from small businesses.

The answers they provide are useless.  Yep.  You can still get the desktop version but it's now priced at more than twice the cost of the online Simple Start.

They've pretty much cut off any ability for a work around.  The only thing I've found that helps at all is using tags or specific job names in the purchase subscription.  The first allows you to search for and the second allows you to pick out charges from a report.

They just don't care about the little guy.