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Billing for Time and Expenses: How It Works

Billing for Time and Expenses

QuickBooks handles Billing for Time and Expenses capably, but you must understand the process thoroughly before proceeding.

Billing for Time and Expenses parts is easy. Pick the items from a list and specify a quantity. Poof. Done.

Billing for Time and Expenses is a little more complex. QuickBooks has built-in tools to help you do this, but it’s a bit of a process.

To simplify your workflow, do this groundwork first:

Go to Edit | Preferences | Time & Expenses | Company Preferences. Click the Yes button under Time tracking and indicate your choices under Invoicing optionsIf you plan to mark up some costs and want a default number, enter a percentage and account (these can be changed on individual invoices).

Figure 1: As you do with other QuickBooks processes, make sure that your Preferences are set correctly.

  • Add any billing items necessary by clicking Lists | Item List and then Item | New in the lower left corner.
  • If you plan to bill for mileage, go to Lists | Customer & Vendor Profile List | Vehicle List and enter information about every business vehicle.

Invoicing for Services

If you’re a service-oriented company, you bill for time frequently. This is easy. You’re probably already familiar with the Enter Time entry in the Employees menu. Whether you make individual time entries or complete a timesheet, you must make the correct selections for each Customer: Job, Service Item, and Payroll Item field, and check the Billable box.

When you create invoices, this box will open after you select a customer:

Billing for Time and Expenses

Figure 2: QuickBooks lets you know when there are times and costs to be billed for each customer.

You can let QuickBooks enter the time totals now, or add them later by clicking the Add Time/Costs button. Either way, the Choose Billable Time and Costs window opens. Add a checkmark next to each entry that should be billed, and click Options… to indicate whether you want one line for each time entry or would rather combine all similar service item types.

Billing for Time and Expenses

Figure 3: QuickBooks wants to know which entries should be invoiced.

More Complexity

If you’re done with Billing for Time and Expenses for this invoice, click OK. If there are other costs that you covered, click the Expenses tab to see all transactions that you earmarked for this client on a bill, check, or credit card. You have the option here to mark up the cost by a percentage or amount (even if you established this in Preferences) and to specify an account.

Do the same for Mileage, which you would have entered previously – when it was incurred — at Company | Enter Vehicle Mileage. Then select any Items that you purchased for the customer. Your records should be correct – assuming that you were conscientious about assigning expenses to customers and jobs.

Billing for Time and Expenses

Figure 3: QuickBooks wants to know which entries should be invoiced.

More Complexity

If you’re done with billable expenses for this invoice, click OK. If there are other costs that you covered, click the Expenses tab to see all transactions that you earmarked for this client on a bill, check, or credit card. You have the option here to mark up the cost by a percentage or amount (even if you established this in Preferences) and to specify an account.

Do the same for Mileage, which you would have entered previously – when it was incurred — at Company | Enter Vehicle Mileage. Then select any Items that you purchased for the customer. Your records should be correct – assuming that you were conscientious about assigning expenses to customers and jobs.

Figure 4: It’s easy to pull billable expenses into invoices if they’re documented carefully.

Turning expenses into invoices and then into income can be complicated. Let us know if we can help. We are your partner in building a successful business.

QuickBooks Here’s a cool little keyboard shortcut. Hit F2 while you’re in QuickBooks, and you’ll get the Product Information screen. It’ll tell you everything you want to know about your specific copy of QuickBooks, like your release and license number, the file size, the number of users logged in, the audit trail status, and the total number of accounts, customers, employees, etc. 
QuickBooks NewsAs of May 31, 2012, Intuit is discontinuing support for QuickBooks Pro, Premier, and Simple Start 2009, QuickBooks for Mac 2009, and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 9. You can continue to use these solutions, of course, but live technical support and add-on services like payroll, credit card processing, online banking, and bill-pay will not be accessible. Talk to us about upgrading if you’re using any of these products or services.

Gita Faust

About the Author

Gita Faust has over 30 years of accounting experience in the real estate and property management industry, Gita Faust is more than just a real estate investor; she is also popular for her work as an accountant, consultant, mentor, speaker, QuickBooks Top ProAdvisor, QuickBooks Solution Provider, member of Intuit’s Trainer/Writer Network, and, of course, author. Gita is well-known for her exemplary leadership and advisory skills. In fact, she even helped pioneer the adaptation of QuickBooks to suit the needs of professionals in real estate and property management. To share her knowledge she has written a series of courses titled Simplified Accounting Solution, which provides step-by-step guidance for those working with QuickBooks.

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