Client Expenses - how to account for

Keith A. Milner maillist at superlative.org
Fri Aug 7 08:55:29 EDT 2009


On Thursday 30 Jul 2009 23:57:42 Marc Croteau wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I run a small business and some months ago decided to use Gnucash for my
> books.
>
> I've had a small problem and it may be conceptual more than anything
> else.  It has to do with client expenses.
>
> I bill clients for my time (I'm a consultant) and occasionally for
> expenses (such as travel, photocopying etc).  I don't seem to have a
> good way to record the expenses such that I can produce a single invoice
> that records both my time and my expense against a client.  This would
> allow me to receive payments against an invoice and have both my time
> and the expenses paid for.
>
> Can you suggest a way of recording expenses against both a category of
> expense AND a client?

I do this all the time.

Basically you need to set up jobs against your customers (Business -> Customer 
-> New Job...). When you record an expense you will create either a new Bill 
(Business -> Vendor -> New Bill...) or a new expense voucher (Business -> 
Employee -> New Expense Voucher...).

HINT: Use a bill rather than an expense voucher where you can as this handles 
tax too. The expense voucher doesn't.

On the pop-up dialog box for these, it will have entries for "Default 
Chargeback Project". In this you first select the customer, and then you select 
the job ID (you get a list of job IDs for that customer). Select the code you 
wish to record this against.

You can maintain a list of codes for different specific projects or contracts 
for the same customer if you wish.

Then you complete the forms as normal (except on the expense voucher you 
should check the "billable?" column for items that should be recharged.

When you raise the customer invoice, in the initial pop-up dialogue box select 
the customer (as normal) and then select the job. You should then get in the 
invoice a list of the recharged items and you can select if you want to 
include them in the invoice, and which income account you should record them 
against, etc.

Note that recharging expenses in this way is an income. I have a separate 
income account called "Recharged Expenses" I use to record these.

regards,

-- 
Keith A. Milner



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