Add past expenses to owner's equity

Before our business was started, my partner paid for a lot of different expenses herself. We have receipts and want to account for those expenses by adding them to her equity account. However, when creating an expense, quickbooks requires the account from which the expense was paid to be added in the expenses section.

In order to credit these expenses to owner's equity, is this a process I can take?

1) Create an owner's contribution (debit cash and credit owner's equity) on the day of the expense.

2) Create an expense (debit the expense and credit cash)

This seems a bit round about, but does it work?