Quite often a Home Watch company will pay for expenses for a client's home. This could be purchases at Home Depot (light bulbs, batteries, air filters, etc.) or paying a service provider (HVAC, Plumber, etc.) who provided services that you helped facilitate. Typically, this would mean two entries in your manual bookkeeping work: one to record the expense and another to bill your client for the expense.
Through the power of QuickBooks Online Plus, this only requires one entry. Let's look at how to perform this step-by-step.
The first step is recording the expense when you incur it. Typically, this is done through the Expense Entry screen, but functions identically if you use the Check Entry screen. For this example, we purchased some air filters at Home Depot that we need to record against our credit card (so that we can reconcile) and then bill back out to our customer Leonard Blanco.
In the Expense Entry screen, you'll see the fields on the right -- all that is required is that you check the "Billable" box, and enter in the customer to which you want to re-bill the expense. Optionally, you could enter a markup percentage if your agreement with the client warrants it. This markup can be hidden on the invoice if you wish. Make sure that the description is filled in completely, as that is what will appear on the customer's invoice when we're finished.
If you have a scanned receipt, make sure to attach it to the expense entry and to optionally send the receipt to the client after you've billed them for it.
After entering the expense in this way, a Billable Charge is added to the Customer's account and can easily be seen when viewing the Customer.
The most important part is invoicing the Customer! When you do your monthly (or more frequent) invoicing, after having generated them through Method, simply open the automatically-created invoice for the customer with the charges. You will see a chevron in the upper right side of the screen, indicating there are charges to add.
Clicking on the chevron will open a sidebar window showing all of the charges that need to be added. Click on each individually or the Add All button to add the charges to the invoice.
After adding the charges, your Customer Account screen will show that the charge is now closed, as you've invoiced it.
Finally, your invoice will include the charge and is ready to be sent to the customer. If you added a scanned receipt in the initial entry you can optionally attach it to the invoice email so that your client will receive the actual invoice without you having to do any additional steps.
It's that easy! If you have any questions or need assistance please don't hesitate to contact us.