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aidan
February 8, 2019
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Employee expenses - reimbursing employees and charging customers

  • February 8, 2019
  • 2 replies
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Newbie here!

 

I'm trying to figure out how to handle reimbursement of employee expenses, some of which should be charged to customers.

 

I've followed How to reimburse an employee (with some help!) to create a journal entry and the report shows what is outstanding to the employee.  But:

1) the report shows what is due but how do I turn that into a payment to the employee?

2) how do I see what is related to customers, and optionally add that to an invoice?

 

I've also followed How to track mileage to create a mileage account and created a bill.  The 'Pay bill' screen shows what is unpaid but:

1) how do I see what is related to customers and turn that into an invoice?

 

Ideally when I create an invoice for a customer the system would prompt me with something like: 'There are these uninvoiced expenses relating to this customer - do you want to include them?'  Is that possible?

 

The mileage approach has the extra feature of calculating costs based on the miles but it seems this approach with bills achieves the same basic aim as the journal approach.  They are both about expenses incurred by employees that the business will reimburse and charge (some of) to customers.  The journal approach seems more 'low-level' and less intuitive than bills - but is the recommended approach.  I don't understand the ramifications of each so am looking for some guidance please!  What are the advantages/disadvantages of these two approaches?

 

    Best answer by Amanda G

    Hello Aidan,

     

    For part one on How to Reimburse an employee. This would be achieved by creating an expense out to your employee as the payee, for the balance that is due.

     

    For part two as well as your question on How to Track mileage, this would be done by marking the transactions as billable to your customer and then select the customer. This option is only available on our plus product and can be turned on by doing the following;

    Gear Icon> Account and Settings> Expenses and then under the top section 'Bills and Expenses' you will have an option to 'Make expenses and items billable.' Turn this on and it will allow you to mark your bills, expenses and items billable to customers.

     

    When you then go into creating a transaction under the customer the expenses billable to them will show on a bar on the right hand side of the screen, prompting you to make them into invoices to the customer.

     

    You can use either bills or journals to create your mileage transactions, this would be personal preference.

     

    Thanks

     

    2 replies

    A
    Amanda GAnswer
    February 8, 2019

    Hello Aidan,

     

    For part one on How to Reimburse an employee. This would be achieved by creating an expense out to your employee as the payee, for the balance that is due.

     

    For part two as well as your question on How to Track mileage, this would be done by marking the transactions as billable to your customer and then select the customer. This option is only available on our plus product and can be turned on by doing the following;

    Gear Icon> Account and Settings> Expenses and then under the top section 'Bills and Expenses' you will have an option to 'Make expenses and items billable.' Turn this on and it will allow you to mark your bills, expenses and items billable to customers.

     

    When you then go into creating a transaction under the customer the expenses billable to them will show on a bar on the right hand side of the screen, prompting you to make them into invoices to the customer.

     

    You can use either bills or journals to create your mileage transactions, this would be personal preference.

     

    Thanks

     

    A
    aidanAuthor
    February 8, 2019

    Hi Amanda

    Thanks for your response.  I have enabled the billable expenses option and that works as you describe when creating a new invoice - the billable expenses are listed on the right.

     

    I don't see an option for making an expense billable in the same way using journal entries.  Is that possible?

     

    Bills appear to be an easier way to manage reimbursement so I'm wondering why the recommended approach is using journal entries?  I'm assuming there is a good reason but I don't understand what that is yet.

    A
    Amanda G
    February 8, 2019

    Hello Aidan,

     

    I don't believe you can make Journal Entries billable to a customer.

     

    I believe Journals will be noted as one method to do this if you are accounting for the payments in the future and they have not yet been expended.

    You would use a bill or expense if the transaction has already happened.

     

    Hope this clears this up for you.

    Thanks.

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