Recording expenses

What happens next is variable. Inventories and purchase orders are an option in any QuickBooks company. If this option is active, two tabs will be visible, above the detail section, marked Expenses and Items (discussed below.) The option may be made active from File|Preferences|Purchases and Vendors or Preferences|Inventory/PO's.

Expenses tab selects purchases not handled as “items.” If the Inventory option is off, or if the Expenses tab is at the front, the left-most column will be headed Account. (If the Item tab is at the front, please click on Expenses , to follow this discussion.) If you did receive items on a purchase order, please see “Recording Items Purchased,” below.

Account used is nearly always an expense account; sometimes it will be a purchased asset. A checking account would never XE "never" be used here. The account name may be typed in. If it does not exist, it may be added. Or an account may be selected from the chart. Clicking the down-arrow to drop the Chart of Accounts is preferred. This displays the entire chart of accounts, but scrolled down to the beginning of the expense accounts. Select the appropriate account.

Memo field of a detail line takes a comment. In reports, this memo will be associated with the listing of the expense (or asset) side of the transaction.

Customer:job associates this expense with a job.

Invoice (the little square icon) is used if a customer:job is named:

Invoice icon in full color: to be invoiced to this customer:job

Invoice icon in faded gray: has been invoiced. (See Note)

X over an invoice icon: never to be invoiced.

NOTE

The bill and the invoice are not linked. The bill will be found when an invoice is generated to this customer, and may be billed through. This sets the invoice icon (here) to the gray “has been invoiced” indication. If the invoice is later deleted, the icon here will remain gray, and the expense will not again be presented for automatic invoicing.

Class field is used if your company accounting plan includes classes on expenses.

OK records the bill and exits the “Enter Bills” function.

Oops! A warning appears if the amount due on the bill is not the sum of the items. One choice will be to correct any item amounts as needed. the other is to click Recalc.

A different warning may pop up if you used Quick Add for a new vendor, which leaves a blank in Terms. If you added terms on this bill, QuickBooks will want to know if you want to make the same terms the usual thing (default) for this vendor, by adding the terms to the vendor name record. This is up to you.

Recalc will force the Amount Due on the bill to become the sum of the items and expenses.

Next or Control-Enter records this bill, and goes to a new, empty bill form.

Print is not there, because it is assumed to be a vendor function. XE "printing:bills"