Invoicing an Expense
In most cases, the work doesn’t stop with simply tracking your expenses . Sometimes, you might need to spend money out of your pocket while carrying out a job for the client, such as buying raw materials, labor charges or travel expenses.
If it’s agreed that such expenses are to be reclaimed from your client , they are referred to as reimbursable expenses. For instance, if your assignment involves frequent travel, your client might agree to reimburse your fuel charges. In such cases, you can record these expenses in Zoho Billing and invoice your client to get it.
Creating and Invoicing a Reimbursable Expense
1. Make the expense billable
- Create a new expense.
- Select a customer and check Billable.
Click Save.
Insight: Expenses that have not been marked billable cannot be invoiced to a client.
This expense can now be converted to an invoice.
2. Invoice the expense
- Select an expense.
- Click Convert to Invoice.
- Fill in the required details such as invoice date and payment terms before sending the invoice.
Click Save.
Including a Billable Expense within an Invoice
Let’s say you offer painting services, and purchased a few cans of paint for a particular job. It doesn’t make sense to invoice the client for the service separately, while sending out a fresh invoice for reimbursement on the paint cans. Combining them both as a single invoice looks much more professional, and makes your accounting much less confusing.
In such cases, you can include the recorded expense as a line item within the main invoice.
- Create a new invoice for your customer.
- Zoho Billing will prompt the unbilled expenses associated with the customer.
- Select the expenses that are associated with this invoice.
Click Save.
Insight: If you are carrying out multiple jobs for the same client, double check to make sure the expenses you’re including are the ones pertaining to the job you’re invoicing for.
The expenses will be added as line items to the invoice.