Thanks @HoneyLynn_G  It was a brain fart moment.  

Hello, @PattiThielen.

I'm glad the steps given by my colleague was able to help you turn off the Billable checkbox. 

If you need anything else, leave a reply below or start a new conversation. The Community is here to help. Take care and have a great day!

Hi!  I was excited to find this thread and specifically the recent advice about clearing a mass amount of unbilled expenses on Quickbooks Online.  We recently converted from desktop to Online and this problem is now apparent and preventing us from inactivating old jobs.

When I go to the dashboard, edit it with the ending to read "managebillableexpense," I get the window shown.  When I input the date and submit, I get the following error message:

Thanks for joining this thread, @ecovert_789.

I appreciate you following the steps provided by @IntuitHeidi. Allow me to chime in for a moment and share some information about the issue you're getting when removing unbilled expenses in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

This has been reported as an ongoing issue with an investigation number INV-16307, and our Product Engineers are now working to fix this as soon as possible. While we don't have a firm timeline for when this investigation will be resolved, I highly suggest you contact out Phone Support team. They have tools that can add your company details to the list of affected users.

Once added, we can immediately notify you once the issue has been fixed and provide you the resolution. I'll also update this post as soon as I get a message from them.

Here's how to reach them:

1. On your QBO account, click the Help icon at the upper right.
2. Select Contact us at the bottom to connect with a live support agent.

That should point you in the right direction. Thanks for your understanding and patience while we look into this. Please post again or leave a comment if you have any follow-up questions. I'm always here to help. Take care!

thank you for this.  I'm must be in a different version, when I go to create an invoice, I do not get the icon that is mentioned.  I am currently using the online version.

Hello there, @dlemans.

I appreciate you joining us here in the Community. I want to ensure that your concern will be addressed properly.

To make sure we're on the same page, may I know which specific steps in the thread are you referring to? If you're having a QuickBooks Online and wanted to delete unbilled expenses, you may follow the steps given by IntuitHeidi above. However, if you're referring to something else, feel free to get back to me so I can provide the right amount of information to get your issue sorted out.

I'll keep an eye for your reply and looking forward to assisting you further. Thank you and have a nice day. 

I have a similar problem, so thanks for that tip about the "Hide" aspect of the invoice. That has cleared a small number of the items that appear in my Unbilled Costs by Job report. However, the majority of my items are not explicitly Billable costs, but rather are General Journal Entries that a past accountant used in order to do some fine-detail revenue recognition[1]. 

I think the problem is simply that when they've made those J/Es, for some reason the accountant has decided to put the relevant customer's name into the "NAME" field in the corresponding line(s) of the J/E. And the reason I think that's the culprit is that I tested it by simply removing the customer's name from the NAME field. When I did that, sure enough the item in question disappeared from the Unbilled Costs by Job report, just as it did following your suggestion to use "Hide" for costs marked as Billable.  To be honest, I don't really see why the J/Es have to have anything in the NAME field in the first place. All they are doing is simply shuffling already-invoiced revenue back and forth in time. That already-invoiced revenue does of course have a NAME attached to it, but that's done back in the actual invoice which we create in the normal fashion. So also doing it in the J/E seems a bit pointless.

One more clarification: in the J/Es in question, most do not have a checkbox in their "BILLABLE?" field on each line. And on the rare occasion where they do have a checkbox, it is always unchecked. So I'm pretty sure that what is making the J/Es in question appear in the Unbilled Costs by Job report is the mere presence of a name in the NAME field. Whether something has been marked as Billable or not appears to be irrelevant.

My question then is, what is the best way to get these J/Es cleared out of the Unbilled Costs by Job report? Should I just go ahead and clear all the NAME fields, as I did to test it? Or will that break things in other places? 

thx

[1] For example, we sometimes have clients who are invoiced weekly. On the occasions where a week straddles a month boundary then the accountant journals so that although there is a single invoice, we end up with two blobs of revenue, one in each month. 

Appreciate the complete details about your concern, @tkelly_uk.

Let me share some information on how the journal entry affect your Unbilled Costs by Job report.

First, the Unbilled Costs by Job Report provides an instant feedback to you concerning expenses your business has incurred that have not yet been billed back to your customers.

Many QuickBooks forms have a billable column available for you to work with – checks, enter bills, time sheets, enter credit card charges, etc.  The purpose of the billable column is to allow you to choose which expenses and/or time entries that you will be passing through to customers when you create an Invoice based on Time & Costs.

Also, every time you entered a specific transaction in QuickBooks Desktop, the system automatically creates a transaction journal for it. Thus, the reason why instead of recording a journal entry, we always advice you to to record the exact transaction instead.

Feel free to reach out to us here in the Community if you have other questions about  entering journal entry in QuickBooks Desktop. I'm here to help.

Thanks for replying @IamjuViel . Based on your answer, I think perhaps my initial question wasn't clear.

---

@IamjuViel wrote:

First, the Unbilled Costs by Job Report provides an instant feedback to you concerning expenses your business has incurred that have not yet been billed back to your customers.

---

But as I described, that report appears to include more than just those not-yet-billed expenses. It also includes journal entries (or at least some of them) where a Customer name has been inserted into the NAME field on a journal line. And it does that regardless of whether those lines have been marked as BILLABLE.

---

@IamjuViel wrote:

Many QuickBooks forms have a billable column available for you to work with – checks, enter bills, time sheets, enter credit card charges, etc.  The purpose of the billable column is to allow you to choose which expenses and/or time entries that you will be passing through to customers when you create an Invoice based on Time & Costs.

---

That's no doubt the case, butI don't think it applies here. As I explained, many, if not most of the transactions I'm having problems with are not checks, bills, time sheets, etc. They are accruals, reversals, etc that were directly entered as General Journal Entries. 

Now you go on to suggest that perhaps journaling is not the best approach here:

---

@IamjuViel wrote:

Also, every time you entered a specific transaction in QuickBooks Desktop, the system automatically creates a transaction journal for it. Thus, the reason why instead of recording a journal entry, we always advice you to to record the exact transaction instead.

But while that may be good advice in general, I don't see how it is applicable here since I am dealing with historical, already-entered transactions. Again, I did explain this. These transactions were entered by a prior accountant and I now have to deal with them as I find them. (That said, I'm not sure how else the accountant should have posted the required entries. They are primarily end of month adjustments in the context of a revenue recognition protocol, and as far as I can see what they have done -- other than adding Customer names to the lines of the journal entry -- is exactly what should have been done. Given that, I'm not sure what what is meant by, "instead of recording a journal entry, we always advice you to to record the exact transaction instead." In this context I'd have thought a Journal Entry *is* the exact transaction.

Now I know that the problem is solved (well, largely) by simply editing the journal entries in question and deleting what has been put in the NAME field. My question was just to ask whether that might create some problems. I've tested it in several ways and I don't think there's any problem, but I wanted to see if anyone else could offer advice on that.

--

I could cry with relief.  Thank you for this managebillableexpense link!!!

I appreciate you following up with me, @tkelly_uk.

Allow me to provide additional information on the effect of adding names in recording journal entry.

You're correct! When creating a journal entry, one should not enter a name on it. Because if you'll add one, you'll describing either an Accounts Receivables or Job tracking.

When creating a journal entry, the first line of the entry is the source, subsequent lines contain the target information. Job-related expenses normally comprise the target portion of an entry (for example, when writing a cheque, the customer:job name is entered with the expense account, which is the target). QuickBooks cannot properly update the unbilled information when it is listed as the source.

Please don't hesitate to click the Reply button if you have other questions about managing your journal entries. I'm always here to help.

https://c43.qbo.intuit.com/app/managebillableexpense

try this app for cleaning-up if using on-line version

THANK YOU!  You just saved me hours of wasted time!  I could kiss you!

I have followed instructions and unchecked the box "Mark all expenses as billable" but each time we create an invoice, and add a customer job , the billable box is automatically checked, creating (once again) a slew of unbilled costs by job.  This is not a problem for the time.  Unchecking "Mark all time as billable" appears to have worked.  But now I still have material expense defaulting to "billable." What am I missing?  

Thanks for sharing a screenshot of your Preferences window, Mellane.

Let's try a couple more troubleshooting steps to have the Billable box stays unchecked. Here's how:

1. Go back to the Preferences window and temporarily check the Mark all expenses as billable box.
2. Click OK, then click OK once again.
3. Close and re-open QuickBooks and log back in to the company file.
4. Re-open the Preferences window and uncheck the box one more time.
5. Make sure to click OK whenever prompted that "QuickBooks must close all its open windows to change this preference".

Once saved, create a sample vendor invoice and check if the Billable box remains unchecked when adding a customer job.

If you're getting the same result, proceed to updating QuickBooks to the latest release, then toggle the settings in the Preferences window afterwards.

Follow this article on how to update QuickBooks: Update QuickBooks Desktop To The Latest Release.

Please add another reply below if you require additional help with this. You can also revisit the Community if you need anything else.

Thank you for the directions. I did as you outlined.  However, the billable default doesn't seem to work when it comes to entering bills.  For example see attached screen shot.  When we first begin to enter the bill, and add the item, and amount, the billable box is not checked (yay)...however, as soon as we indicate job information (for job cost tracking purposes), the little billable box becomes automatically checked.  So unless the person entering the bills is paying close attention, that box remains checked and thus our unbilled costs list grows.  Any fix to that?  

Hi Mellane,

Right now, the option to remove the billable mark isn't possible. However, for tracking purposes you can uncheck the Billable box manually. I'll guide you how.

1. Click Vendors. Then, Enter Bills.
2. Click the Items tab, add the Item, Description, and Amount.
3. Add the Customer:Job, then uncheck the Billable box.
4. Click Save & Close. See attached screenshot below.

Once done, you can check the unbilled cost of your customer.

I've got an article that you can read for more information about: Tracking job costs in QuickBooks Desktop.

If you need to some help articles about projects for your future tasks, you can check this page: Inventory and projects.

Always swing by if you have other concerns. We're here to help.

Thank you for your help.  I am hoping that QB will make the obvious modification that will allow defaults that we set in Company Preferences (for expenses not to be billable) to apply to bills (a primary source of expenses) just as it applies to our labor costs, so that we don't have to manually uncheck the box each and every time.  

I've followed the solution, but for one job I have 11,000 expenses.  Is there a way to check the "hide" column for all the transactions at once.  Obviously this would be a massive task!  Writing an invoice to this "job" cause QB to crash so I need to clear them out.  Thanks

Thank you for posting here in the Community, @Friends of the Inyo.

I can see how the option to hide all expenses from the Choose Billable Time and Costs window is beneficial to your business. Right now, the only option is to add a checkmark manually from the Hide column.

The ability to perform the process by batch is a great idea that will also benefit other customers. Your suggestions will serve as a guide on which area of the product we should make improvements.

To ensure your voice is heard, I can send another feature request on your behalf. In the meantime, you can visit the Firm of the Future site to view the recent happenings and future developments about the product.

I want to make sure this is taken care of for you. If you have any other concerns, post a comment below. I’ll pop right back in to assist further. Have a good one.

I was excited to find your input on how to mark multiple "billable" transactions as  not billable.  However, I was unable to follow your instructions.  I called tech support who told me I would have to change this one transaction at a time (as they previously had told me) so I referenced them to your solution which we tried to follow together.... but again we were unable to lock the code.  It appears some things may have changed within QBO since your original post.  I have about 16 years worth of transactions that are marked billable.  When I migrated over from desktop in January of this year all customers and vendors and accounts which I had previously made inactive became active as a result.  Is there still a way mark multiple transactions as NOT billable?  Thanks in advance!

Hello, @Luke65.

The workaround we can to for now is to manually remove the billable check-mark under the Billable column for your expenses. Or, you can create an invoice for those billable transactions, then just manually change the rates to zero (0).

To remove the billable mark for your expenses:

1. Open the expense transaction, remove the check-mark under the Billable column.
2. Click on the Save or Save and close button to record the changes.
3. Follow the steps for the rest of the billable transactions.

To create an invoice with zero rates:

1. Select Invoice from the Plus (+) new icon, then select the customer's name under the Customer section.
2. Look for the billable transactions under the Add to Invoice section, then click the Add button for the billable expenses you want to add.
3. The expense/s will now be added to the invoice, change the amount to zero (0).
4. Save the transaction.
5. Repeat the steps for other customers.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I'm a few clicks away to help. Have a good day!

I would just like to confirm if doing this will not affect the data from prior period and it would just close out the unbilled charges. Thank you

Thanks for joining this conversation, @mrafael.

Yes, you're right. Removing or closing the unbilled expense in QuickBooks will not affect the data from the prior period. To do it, you can follow the steps shared by my colleagues above.

For tips and other resources, I highly suggest visiting our website for our reference: Self-help articles.

Reach out to me in the comment below if you have any other questions or concerns, and I'll get back to you right away. I'm always here to help. Have a great day!