Have the ability to have a catchall product/service for expenses billable to customers
Currently for a product/service to be selected in the Expense transaction window you must check the box that says "I purchase this product/service from a vendor." Then you have to select a specific expense account. This is not ideal especially if you are creating a catchall product/service for various expense categories.
Normally businesses will have a catchall income category where when they purchase or do something on behalf of the customer that costs the business money they will bill the customer for it as some specific "service" so that it shows up on the invoice and a description can be attached to it. However, at the moment nothing like that exists. QBO does what I'm describe in 2 different actions:
- If you want expenses billed to clients to be captured into income regardless of the expense category then you will create an expense transaction and pick out what categories you want under "category details."
- The problem with this approach is that when linking the expense transaction to the customer's invoice the "product/service" will be blank and that is not ideal for customers because customers wonder what it is and technically it is a service a business is providing.
The other problem is when you decide to type up a product/service for that linked expense then that whole linked expense gets reset to $0.
The other method is to credit a "product/service" and check the box that says "I purchase this product/service from a vendor" which will then force you to pick a specific category that this product/service will be expensed to.
The problem with this is that if you have multiple items that you normally purchase on behalf of the client then you'd need to create multiple services which is not ideal and 99% of the time businesses usually have 1 catchall service for those various purchases on behalf of the customer and then they use the description to specify exactly what it is.
For example: You'd create a service called "Out-of-pocket expense" and you'd want it to catch things like postage expense, meal expense, travel expense, whatever else your business buys on behalf of the customer and then later charges them back for it.
So, to fix this 1 of the 2 things needs to happen:
1. Either let the user type in the product/service in the invoice when the "category details" on the expense screen are used and linked to a customer's invoice, OR
- Do not require a specific expense category for a product/service that you purchase from a vendor so that it can be used as a catchall for various expense categories, but still hit the intended income and be shown on the invoice.
See attached PDF which shows an example.
