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Ozzy81
January 24, 2020
Question

Self employed billable expenses

  • January 24, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 0 views

Hi,

I'm self employed and have been increasing my use of Quickbooks over the past couple of years. In my first tax year I was only using it as a calculator, linked to my account but invoicing separately, this past year I have been invoicing through QB. I frequently have to add travel/parking expenses etc to my invoices, but as far as I can tell the way QB is set up those expenses seem to be added to my taxable income. How do I separate non-taxable reimbursements (parking etc) from taxable income (labour)? Is that possible?

Looking through the help section there are mentions of Billable Expenses, but I can't see that in my settings, perhaps because I'm on Self Employed QB? I'm prepared to accept that I'm being an idiot, but I can't seem to do it.

1 reply

C
Catherine_B
January 24, 2020

Yes, you're correct, the billable expense is available in the QuickBooks Online plan, Ozzy81.

 

It's possible that when you tagged the customer's payment, you toggled it as a Business that's why the travel/parking expense was posted as your taxable income. If the payment was directly downloaded from the connected bank within QBSE, you can exclude it. Then, manually split the payments posting the travel/parking expenses a Personal and labour amount and toggled as a Business type. Then, categorize them. 

 

Let me show you how to exclude and add them:

  1. From the Transactions page.
  2. Select the transaction drop-down.
  3. Click the Exclude this transaction box at the bottom. 
  4. At the upper-right, click Add transaction.
  5. Enter the Description (travel/parking expenses) > Amount > Type (Personal) > Category.
  6. Click Save.
  7. Add transaction again for the Labour > Amount > Type (Business) > Category. 
  8. Select Save.

Let me know if you need more help!

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Ozzy81Author
January 27, 2020

Thanks for your reply, Catherine.

I think I've got myself into a bit of a muddle, so forgive me for asking for some hand-holding.

So for every invoice with expenses there are 3 elements once I've linked up to my bank account: The record of (1) my payment for the expenses (eg payment to Uber), and the amount paid to me covering (2) labour and (3) expenses.

In this system do I exclude my payment, then split the fee received into business income and personal?

To split the fee received can I not use the Split function? The way you described it it seemed like I essentially need to exclude my fee and then re-input it as business income and the expenses as personal. Is that correct?

P
payment after leaving
January 27, 2020

Hi Ozzy81

 

If you have your bank connected and there are transactions appearing on the transactions page, you can split either your income or expenditure into business or personal and split in a percentage or amount format.

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