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How do I know if a vendor bill has been invoiced if a client invoice is created by an estimate based on % complete?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
January 29, 2019
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I am taking over the bookkeeping for a new client and they invoice all their clients via estimate. They create and estimate and then create an invoice from the estimate each month based on the % complete.

1 - They enter the vendor invoice and show it as billable to the client

2 - They create an invoice from the estimate based on % complete.

3 - How do I show or know a vendor invoice has been billed if the client invoice is based on % complete?

QuickBooks Desktop

Best answer by qbteachmt

Thank you. I understand that. We won't mark the vendor bill as billable. I'm just confused on how to make sure we bill all costs to the project when not using the Add Item option. Sometimes there are more costs than the estimate and we want to make sure they are all included and there seems no easy way to make sure you cover all your costs by billing by percent complete.

"I'm just confused on how to make sure we bill all costs to the project when not using the Add Item option."

Run your Reports. That is how you manage projects.

"Sometimes there are more costs than the estimate"

Run the report Estimates vs Actuals Detail for that one job. This is how you manage if there are overruns = you see that different in this report.

"and we want to make sure they are all included"

They don't get included in Progress Billing. Let's review:

If you sign a Quote, and that is All I am charging you, then I need to manage that there is no Overrun. Or, I give you a Quote, but we will charge from Actual Time & Costs, and you agreed to that Scope as Not a fixed bid, but as a sort of Plan or budget.

Or, Both: We progress invoice from the estimate. As we work, we discover there is a need for an expanded scope = change order, and you agree we sill simply charge Direct Time and Costs for the amount outside of the original estimate's Scope. That is a Separate Invoice. I progress invoice from the Estimate. I separately invoice using Add Time & Costs, for the "Additional Scope."

"and there seems no easy way to make sure you cover all your costs by billing by percent complete."

Because agreeing to a Progress Invoice from an Estimate or scope is sometimes referred to as "not to Exceed/ Not to Succeed." The point of using Progress Invoicing is to be good enough to project your Costs and manage the project and build in the Price to cover your own contingency factor.

This is why some business only use Direct Time at Hourly Rates & Costs, or Time & Costs plus Markup. Not everyone can Bid a job and then stay to the Bid or Estimate. That is part of Project management, not QB.

You can finish a job and come in more profitable than expected under Progress Invoicing. You can finish a job and see less profit than planned due to errors in the Estimate, do-overs, improper supervision of labor, and errors in contracts with suppliers of goods or services.

I had one architect ask me, "How much can I work on this job?" The answer was, up to what you Estimated it will take. If you do Twice the work, we just lost money.

M

MaryGraceS

Hello there, @Kitkat2.

I'd be happy to help get you to the right track to get this resolved.

I have an answer to a post with a question similar to this. Let me direct you there: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/community/Reports-and-accounting/Estimate-Adjustment/m-p/232495#M13745.

That should take care of it.

Feel free to drop a comment below if you have any other questions about QuickBooks. Please know that the Community has your back if you need assistance. Wishing you and your business continued success.

K

Kitkat2Author

I guess I'm not being clear. These are the steps we take in QuickBooks:

1 - Create Estimate

2 - Receive invoice from vendor

3 - Enter invoice from vendor - it shows billable to customer

4 - Create invoice to customer based on % complete

How do I know that the invoice from vendor is being billed, if it still shows as billable to customer since I bill customer from the estimate for % complete? I'm not selecting the vendor invoice to bill to custom invoice so I'm not understanding how to remove that 'billable to customer'

IamjuViel

It's great to here again from you, @Kitkat2.

Allow me to join the conversation and provide additional details on how to determined whether a recorded invoice is billable.

If I may ask, are you perhaps referring to the invoice your vendor gave to you? If yes, when you received an invoice from a vendor it will be recorded as a bill in the system. You can verify whether an invoice is billed if there's a check mark on the column that says Billable.

On the other hand, to ensure the estimates and invoices you created are tracked accurately, here's the correct workflow:

That should do it! If you need further help with the workflow above, I'd recommend contacting our Customer Care Team. An agent will be able to further assist you via secured remote access session.

Here’s how to contact us:

Go to: https://help.quickbooks.intuit.com/en_US/contact.
Choose your QuickBooks Product.
Select your QuickBooks version.
On the Contact Us page, click a topic.
Click on the Get Phone Number button to see the support number.

Let me know if you have other questions on how QuickBooks Desktop handles your accounts receivables. I'm always here to lend a hand.

C

cbsmith

I also have a similar issue. We track furniture purchases for client projects (interior design firm) via Estimates so we can get better reporting Est vs. Actual at the end of a Job, per order. It appears that to get the good report, I have to Invoice my client via the Estimate, instead of the "Add Time/Costs" item list, which is how I previously got to those billables to an invoice (that have shown up from a default setting in QBD when I entered the Bill. My process is as follows.

- First, I enter an estimate for the product (Our customer NEVER sees this estimate, we only use if for reporting).

- Then, I create a Purchase Order for from the Estimate, to send to our vendor

- Then I receive the invoice from the vendor, and pay the Purchase Order with a Bill.

- The bill automatically checks the Bill line items with billable to that same client

- Then I pay the Bill with a payment

- Then I invoice the client

* Upon invoicing the client (we don't do progress billing). Always 100%, I have two options that I see:

1. There is the pop-up window that shows the list of Estimates I have created for that customer. If I produce the Invoice from there, it may not include other charges that belong with that invoice that came up later, i.e. a delivery fee, or perhaps a fee from a vendor that was additional that wasn't on the original estimate and was a separate vendor, many different reasons there could be extra fees. These items never made it to a PO or an Estimate, just a Bill or sometimes just a Payment.

2. The Add Time/Costs tabs - where these other charges show up from the Bill (with the check marked billable).

Under Add Time/Costs - The problem is I see both the new charges in there and the items I just imported from the Estimate to the Invoice (and there are 100s of charges, by the way, for these customers for one project, we could have up to 100 Purchase Orders, with multiple line items, and so this "Add Time/Costs list has hundreds of lines). The issue is the just billed charges don't go away when I bill via Estimate, and now I am having to scroll down these 100s of charges to pick out the other fees that may go with this order.

Why doesn't it close both out (the Estimate and the lines under Add Time/Costs from the Bill)?

My second question is, if I don't use Estimates to create the Invoices, and go ahead and use the Add Time/Costs area, will my Estimate vs. Actual reports show $0 under "Actual Revenue"? Or will it show the amount that was actually invoiced? For instance the "Item Estimates vs. Actual" Report. I don't think it does, and so I have to use an Estimate or Proposal to make that happen for the owner.

It sounds to me from the above back and forth, that the product Invoices created from an Estimate or Proposal, upon creating the "Bill" in QBD from the PO, that I should uncheck all of those, except probably the shipping and any additional charges that may have come in after the Estimate and PO were created. Can someone confirm this?

Thank you!

Jen_D

Thanks for updating this thread and sharing your concern with us, @cbsmith.

It's great to have you here, and I want to help you further.

The only time those charges in the Add Time/Costs is cleared is if it was assigned to a posting transaction. If you want to use progress invoicing and assign the other charges, create the invoice within the estimate itself at 100%. Then, once all the items are assigned to the sale, click the Add Time/Costs icon to add any additional charges for that customer.

Since you also need to create bills out of the estimate, the process of creating PO's from it is the correct process before bills. For now, can you please send some screenshots to show the duplicates you're referring to? This will help us make sure you're on the right track.

See this related link about the topic: Set up and send progress invoices in QuickBooks Desktop

If you have any questions or need further help with QuickBooks progress invoicing and billing, visit us anytime. You can also mention my name on your posts, and I'll be more than happy to help. Have a nice day!

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