Mark up Expenses

There ya go... you entered the billable expenses as ITEMS - tab #1

If you want to mark up EXPENSES, then when you enter the billable expenses "in various ways (checks written, credit card debits, vendor bills)" - then enter them using the expense tab, not the item tab.

Duh. Thank you, L. Now I will go splash cold water on my red face.

Sincerely, Joanne

Can you tell me why the "Billable" column on the check will not allow me to check it? I see the black check icon but it will not check the column. I looked through "Preferences" and don't see how to enable that column. The expense does not flow through to the invoice Time/Cost Expense tab and I'm sure it's because the column is unchecked.

Thanks again.

Sincerely, Joanne

Actually, it's the opposite. When you check the column, the expense is marked as 'not billable'. From QB help "To indicate that this expense should be passed along to the customer, leave the Billable column (the column headed by the small invoice icon) blank (without an 'X' through it)."

There are only two reasons I can think of that would prevent the expense from 'flowing through' to the invoice. One is that the account you are using for the billable expenses has the wrong type.

From QB help "If you want this amount to be billable to the job: Reassign it to an expense account, other current asset account, or other expense account. These are the only types of accounts for which you can transfer costs to an invoice."

The other reason might be that you have already billed the expense. If so, the billable icon will show as grey. I am not sure how to correct this. The QB helpfile has a topic regarding time that was billed, which states, in part, "When you record an invoice for billable time, QuickBooks changes the billing status from not billed to billed (the icon on the far right turns gray). The status doesn't change back to not billed even if you edit or delete the invoice." I am not sure if the same applies to billable expenses.

I find the way costs/time are charged to a job to be one of the more problematic aspects of QuickBooks. Since a large percentage of the work our company does are bid jobs, making the time/expense billable for ALL timesheet entries is not appropriate, as the time spent on bid jobs then shows up in the unbilled expenses reports. Yet the 'solution' of letting all the time and costs flow through to the invoice, and then DELETING the invoice (or at least the lines relating to time) seems to be the only way of marking time/costs as 'billed'.

On my version, the column is labeled "Billable?" and the check mark means "Yes".

You hit the mark. I had both GL Accounts set up as COGS rather than Expenses. That unlocked the problem.

The only way I know to correct the problem is to go back to the original check and recheck the "Billable?" column. Quite a hassle.

I tested and it does.

You are right. The unbilled report is becoming outrageous. I'll try your solution.

After all this, I'm really unhappy with the end result of the invoice. What I was hoping for was each reimbursable item to be marked up so that a ten dollar item would show on the invoice as $11 (assuming a 10% markup) with the same description "Materials" or "Contracted Service" as it was originally identified. Now I can either show that detail plus the markup detail or have the words re-named as a default Group or a description I change that to which would then be the default for both categories of our flow-through expenses. I do see that I can do this for each item separately but still must settle for the default description.

It would almost be easier to continue to use the "Item" portion of a check and manually change each invoice line to the marked up value.

Thank you so much for all your experience in this field of QB accounting. You have really helped me out, L.

Sincerely, Joanne