If your business incurs expenses on behalf of a customer that you intend to charge back, QuickBooks Online allows you to easily track and bill these expenses. This ensures you recover costs and maintain accurate project profitability.
Before you can bill expenses to customers, you need to ensure this feature is enabled in your QuickBooks Online settings.
Go to Settings (Gear icon) > Account and settings.
Select the Expenses tab.
In the "Bills and expenses" section, click the Edit icon (pencil).
Turn on Make expenses and items billable.
(Optional) You can also enable Track expenses and items by customer and choose to show "markup" on billable expenses.
Click Save and then Done.
When you incur an expense that you plan to bill to a customer, you need to mark it as billable and assign it to the correct customer. This can be done when creating an expense, check, or bill.
Go to + New > Expense (or Check, Bill).
Fill in the expense details (Payee, Payment account, Date, Amount).
In the "Category details" section (or "Item details" if using products/services), select the appropriate Category (e.g., Travel, Materials).
In the Customer/Project column, select the customer you want to bill this expense to.
Check the Billable box for that line item. A small green circle with a checkmark will appear, indicating it's billable.
(Optional) Enter a Markup % if you want to add a percentage on top of the cost.
Click Save and close.
Once an expense is marked as billable to a customer, it will appear as an available item when you create an invoice for that customer.
Go to + New > Invoice.
Select the Customer who has billable expenses.
A "Add to invoice" drawer will slide out on the right side of the screen, showing all outstanding billable expenses and items for that customer.
Review the expenses and click Add next to the ones you want to include on the current invoice.
The selected billable expenses will now appear as line items on your invoice. You can adjust descriptions or amounts if needed.
Click Save and send or Save and close to finalize the invoice.
By following these steps, you can effectively track and bill expenses to your customers in QuickBooks Online, ensuring accurate financial records and proper reimbursement for your costs.