I also have a similar issue. We track furniture purchases for client projects (interior design firm) via Estimates so we can get better reporting Est vs. Actual at the end of a Job, per order. It appears that to get the good report, I have to Invoice my client via the Estimate, instead of the "Add Time/Costs" item list, which is how I previously got to those billables to an invoice (that have shown up from a default setting in QBD when I entered the Bill. My process is as follows.
- First, I enter an estimate for the product (Our customer NEVER sees this estimate, we only use if for reporting).
- Then, I create a Purchase Order for from the Estimate, to send to our vendor
- Then I receive the invoice from the vendor, and pay the Purchase Order with a Bill.
- The bill automatically checks the Bill line items with billable to that same client
- Then I pay the Bill with a payment
- Then I invoice the client
* Upon invoicing the client (we don't do progress billing). Always 100%, I have two options that I see:
1. There is the pop-up window that shows the list of Estimates I have created for that customer. If I produce the Invoice from there, it may not include other charges that belong with that invoice that came up later, i.e. a delivery fee, or perhaps a fee from a vendor that was additional that wasn't on the original estimate and was a separate vendor, many different reasons there could be extra fees. These items never made it to a PO or an Estimate, just a Bill or sometimes just a Payment.
2. The Add Time/Costs tabs - where these other charges show up from the Bill (with the check marked billable).
Under Add Time/Costs - The problem is I see both the new charges in there and the items I just imported from the Estimate to the Invoice (and there are 100s of charges, by the way, for these customers for one project, we could have up to 100 Purchase Orders, with multiple line items, and so this "Add Time/Costs list has hundreds of lines). The issue is the just billed charges don't go away when I bill via Estimate, and now I am having to scroll down these 100s of charges to pick out the other fees that may go with this order.
Why doesn't it close both out (the Estimate and the lines under Add Time/Costs from the Bill)?
My second question is, if I don't use Estimates to create the Invoices, and go ahead and use the Add Time/Costs area, will my Estimate vs. Actual reports show $0 under "Actual Revenue"? Or will it show the amount that was actually invoiced? For instance the "Item Estimates vs. Actual" Report. I don't think it does, and so I have to use an Estimate or Proposal to make that happen for the owner.
It sounds to me from the above back and forth, that the product Invoices created from an Estimate or Proposal, upon creating the "Bill" in QBD from the PO, that I should uncheck all of those, except probably the shipping and any additional charges that may have come in after the Estimate and PO were created. Can someone confirm this?
Thank you!
