Returned Customer Cheque - Accounting Created Unbilled Costs - How to Fix?

Hi Michelle,

Thanks for reaching out about this. I know important this feature is to you and the type of business you run. 

I want to make sure I'm on the same page as you. I tried opening your attachment but nothing is coming up. Could you send me the attachment again? You can do this by attaching it as a comment below. I'll be on standby. For reference, this is what I'm getting so far: 

Hi James,

I also had trouble opening the file after I posted the message, until I tried the download link, and then it opened. I've attached it again, and also inserted it as a photo in the message.

Thank you,

Michelle

Good day, Michelle. I've tried to replicate this on my end and I'm able to check it as billable and vice versa. I want to make sure I'm on the same page as you. Could you send me a full screenshot of the journal entry window? In the meantime, check out this helpful video which explains How to delete unbilled time/cost in QuickBooks.  Feel free to ask questions. I'm here to help. 

Hi James,

Thank you for your response. I watched the video, but it didn't address how to remove unbilled costs that have been created with journal entries. What was interesting though was that in the video she did have unbilled costs due to journal entries, but she didn't address these.

Here are images of the unbilled cost report, and the two journal entry windows. As mentioned, I cannot select the billable field at all in the JE window. Thank you so much for your time, it's much appreciated.

Thanks for sending the screenshot. The account in the first column ( RBC General), is that an expense account? Are all the accounts in the first column expense accounts? The reason I ask is that in order to make the transaction billable, it has to be an expense account. 

Hello @mswanson ,

I'm just curious why you need these entries to be billable?  The entry is already creating another A/R for this client in the amount of the original bounced cheque, simply so you can recover the amount.  The sales entry has already been made with the original invoice to this client, which has not been reversed in any way.    To mark something as billable simply means that it will show up as being able to invoice on a future invoice.  Which part of these journal entries do you want to be able to invoice to a client?

Hi, I don't want them to be billable at all. I used the Manage Bounced Cheque feature in QB as the client's cheque was returned, and now the transactions the resulted through using this link are listing on my unbilled cost report. I'm trying to remove them from my unbilled cost report, but cannot find how to do this with journal entry transactions.

Hi James,

The only expense account is the bank service fee. RBC General is one of our bank accounts.

OK, I see your issue.  I thought a workaround might be to create an invoice for that client, select outstanding billable costs to clear it from that list, and then later delete the invoice.  But despite the Unbilled Costs by Job report showing the Billing Status as 'Unbilled', they don't show up in the 'Choose Billable Time and Costs'.  There must be a way to get those off the report, but at present I'm not sure how to do it.  I'll do some research and see what I can find.

Your time is much appreciated, thank you. Our Accountant advised to complete a Journal Entry at year end to account for our Work in Progress (WIP), and I'm having the same issue for this in not being able to remove it from my unbilled cost report. I believe the solution (if there is one) for the Manage Bounced Cheque transactions will work on my WIP JE's as well.

I can see how this would be maddening.  I've looked high and low, and under normal circumstances, the only way to remove unbilled costs from the report is to mark them as billed in the "Add Time and Costs" part of an invoice to the same customer name.  At that point you can bill them, and then delete the invoice, or just use the far right column and "Hide" them, and they'll never show up again, unless you reflag the line as 'billable' again.

Now the bad news . . . I've done some testing and here's what I've found out.  The account lines that have any account type other than an 'Expense' account type, will never be able to be marked as 'Billable'.  Only Expenses can be marked as Billable.  Of course, if you can't mark them billable so you can get rid of them in the 'Add Time & Costs' part of an invoice, then they're not going anywhere anyways, even if it were possible to mark accounts other than Expenses as billable.

However, upon opening the journal entry that shows the bank service charges, on the line charging the Bank Service Charge account, if you fill in the customer name (it currently comes up blank), then that line can be marked billable.  But to no avail.  Even when you go to an invoice for that client and mark that line to add to the invoice, or if you mark it as hidden, it still is not removed from the report.

I think this is one of Intuit's oversights in designing a supposedly clever way to deal with NSF cheques.  They overlooked the fact that these items can never be removed from the Unbilled Costs report, unfortunately.  Personally, I have never used the bounced cheque feature.  It takes all of a minute or less to make the entries myself, thus avoiding this problem.  Features that haven't been thought through to their conclusion are more hindrance than help.  Too bad, really - it sounds like a good idea.

My advice would be to delete the journal entries that the 'Bounced Cheque' feature created, and do your own.  Then your report will be clean.

Hi Rochelley,

I found a simple fix!! While you need to have the customer/job entered in the Journal Entry line that lists the Accounts Receivable account, you don't need to have the customer/job entered in the line that has the other account, in this case the Bank Service Fees expense account and bank asset account. When I removed the customer/job from the JE lines that did not have the Accounts Receivable account, the transactions were then removed from the Unbilled Costs report. 

Here are images of the revised Journal entries:

Thank you for your time in reviewing my issue and the QB system for a solution, it's much appreciated.

Regards,

Michelle

Great, I'm glad you found a workaround!

After googling same issue, this helped with my exact same situation!  Thank you so much!!!  

Hi All,

I have been having this same issue with QB and it has driven me crazy. I contacted intuit and was on the phone for over an hour with a very kind customer service rep. The rep could not figure this out as well. Thank you so much for your perseverance in this matter. I know what to do in the future.

Thanks again!!!!