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joseph11
January 17, 2021
Question

How do I enter an employee expense report and then pay them through QB payroll?

  • January 17, 2021
  • 1 reply
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1 reply

J
jamespaul
January 18, 2021

Hello, Joseph. 

 

I see that you're trying to reimburse an employee for the expenses. I'm happy to show you the steps on how to achieve this in QuickBooks Online with payroll. 

 

Getting the expense report depends on how you recorded those employee expenses. You can pull up the Transaction Detail By Account report, then filter it to see how much you need to reimburse. Here's how:

 

  1. Go to the Reports menu.
  2. In the search box, type "Transaction Detail by Account."
  3. Click the Customize button.
  4. In the General section, select the date for Report period.
  5. Expand the Rows/Columns section, set the Group By setting to Employee. 
  6. Open the Filter section, check the Distribution Account box, then choose the accounts where you track you reimbursements.
  7. Select the employee under the Employee drop-down menu. 
  8. Click Run report.

 

 

 

Next, you'll want to create paychecks to pay them. Before doing this, make sure to create a reimbursement pay type. Here's how:

 

  1. Go to Payroll, then click the Employees tab.
  2. Find and select your employee.
  3. Click the Pencil icon beside Pay.
  4. Under section 4, click the pencil icon again.
  5. Under You can also pay, check or create the Reimbursement pay item.
  6. Click Done. 

 

 

 

Finally, run payroll to pay your employees:

 

  1. On the Employees section again, click the Run payroll button.
  2. Select the payroll schedule. 
  3. Check the employee, then enter the reimbursement amount. 
  4. Run payroll as you normally would. 

 

For reference about the steps above, you can check these articles: 

 

 

Please visit our articles if you need more help with the processes in QuickBooks Online. Go to our QuickBooks Online articles list to get started. 

 

You're welcome to ask more questions in this thread. I'm here to help you with the processes for payroll or QuickBooks Online in general. 

 

J
joseph11Author
January 18, 2021

Thanks for the answer but I think I wasn’t clear on my question. Sorry about that. 

I am an employee of the corporation. The first question is how do I record my expenses in QuickBooks? I went to the expenses tab and clicked new then I enter in my expenses for the month of Jan to date and listed myself as the Payee. 
I don’t know what you mean by reimbursable accounts on the report there were several expenses and I itemized them in the expense sheet. Office supplies, equipment, marketing, etc. 

Can I just do a transfer from the corporate bank to my personal account? I found the reimbursement type under payroll. Is that the best practice to reimburse myself using the payroll or is a transfer OK? 

thanks for the help! 

R
Rea_M
January 18, 2021

Thanks for the additional details you've provided above, @joseph11.

 

You're already on the right track in recording your expenses in QuickBooks Online (QBO). Based on your scenario above, I can tell that you used personal funds to pay the company expenses (i.e., office supplies).

 

The best practice to pay a business expense that's paid by an employee is to record a reimbursement through a check or an expense transaction. The reimbursable account is the liability account that'll record your expense transaction. However, if you want to pay a reimbursement through payroll, you can follow the step-by-step guide provided by my colleague above. Then, delete the expense transaction you've created.

 

After that, you can pull up the Transaction Detail by Account report. This is to check that the employee reimbursement is recorded accordingly. Just go to the For my accountant section from the Reports menu's Standard tab, or follow the steps provided by my colleague above.

 

Let me know if you have other concerns about managing business expenses and recording employee reimbursements in QBO. I'm just around to help. Take care always.

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