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What is the Benefit of Using Billable Expenses and Time in QuickBooks Online?

The main benefit of using the billable checkbox in QuickBooks Online is that it allows you to easily track and invoice expenses incurred on behalf of customers or projects. By marking expenses as billable, you can pass those costs directly to your clients for reimbursement.




Some key advantages include:


  1. Client Reimbursement: Billable expenses enable you to accurately bill clients for out-of-pocket costs related to their projects, such as travel expenses, materials, subcontractor fees, etc. This ensures you can recover those expenses from the client. 

  2. Expense Tracking: QuickBooks provides reports like the "Billable Expenses by Customer Detail" report to track all billable expenses assigned to each customer or project. This helps monitor project costs and profitability.

  3. Profitability Analysis: By comparing billable expenses to revenue for each client or project, you can assess profitability and identify the most lucrative projects.

  4. Invoicing Efficiency: The billable checkbox allows you to easily add marked expenses to customer invoices with just a few clicks, streamlining the invoicing process.

  5. Providing attachments for chargeback items by attaching original receipts and bills to your expense in QuickBooks, showing clients of the actual cost before your markup is applied. 



But let’s say, you forget to check something off as ‘billable’:


Expense Transactions Assigned to Customers Not Marked as Billable

Receive a notification whenever an expense, bill or check assigned to a customer is not marked as billable.

Time Charges Assigned to a Customer Not Marked as Billable

Receive a notification whenever a time charge assigned to a customer is not marked as billable.

Billable Expense Transactions without an Attachment

Receive a notification when an attachment has not been added to an expense or bill marked as billable.


Wouldn’t that be super helpful? The Level Copilot will notify you when you’ve missed marking items as billable! Or when an attachment was not uploaded to support the charges! 


How to turn ‘billable' functionality on in QuickBooks Online: 


Before you can start tracking and invoicing billable expenses in QuickBooks Online, you need to enable this feature. To do this, go to the Settings menu and select Account and Settings. Then choose “Expenses” from the left menu. In the “Bills and Expenses” section, turn on “Make expenses and items billable.”



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