How QB Vendor Expenses Are Imported

BigTime can read and/or import any vendor expenses you enter into QuickBooks (e.g. - bills, checks, PO receipts or credit card charges) as long as those expenses are recorded against a valid BigTime project. Below is a screen shot from a QuickBooks bill that has been recorded against a sample BigTime project.

The bill is fairly simple: a computer purchase for a customer. Take a look at the line item for the bill.

1. It's linked to a project called "Edison's Attic:Evaluation."
2. It's linked to the "item" called "Computer Hardware."

BigTime will spot that expense entry when it does the nightly sync, and it will pull that vendor expense into our list of expenses on the project. When we take a look at the expense "detail" for this project, BigTime will show us that there are $1,215.00 in "unbilled expenses" for this project, and it will show us the detail that it pulled from QuickBooks.

Setting up Expense Imports

How did BigTime know to pull that particular bill? Because we told it to. You can edit your firm's preferences when it comes to importing vendor expenses from QuickBooks. In the advanced settings for QuickBooks, you'll see that BigTime can be setup to automatically pull vendor expenses from QuickBooks according to several parameters.

• You can tell BigTime what types of transactions it should import. The system can import bills, checks, PO receipts, credit card charges or credit card credits. In each case, the transaction's "line items" must be connected to a valid BigTime project and it must be connected to an "expense" GL account or to an "item."
• You can set a "minimum date" before which no expense data will be pulled. If you have several years of history in QuickBooks, but would only like BigTime to import expenses on or after a certain date, that minimum date can be specified in your expense import settings
• You can ask BigTime to import ONLY unbilled expenses. If you turn on this filter, any expenses that have been invoiced in QuickBooks (or marked as "no charge") will be ignored by BigTime.

Each of these options are supported by only certain versions of QuickBooks, and all of them are supported by version 2005 or higher. Take a look at the QuickBooks settings chapter to learn more about each option.

In the meantime, you may also want to keep in mind that these expenses are imported as a part of the nightly sync. If you are working with both systems and would like to import new bills/expenses right away (without waiting for the nightly sync), then you can kick off a manual import by going to the Tools... QuickBooks Data... Manual Imports screen.

COGS Accounts and BigTime

Line items linked directly to COGS accounts can't be imported from QuickBooks. That's because there is no way to mark these items as "billed" or "unbilled" (a feature that is part of the design in QuickBooks). If you'd like to pass-through COGS expenses, then link them to an "item" in QuickBooks instead.

1. Create a new item in QuickBooks. That item should be a "reimbursable expense," and the expenses should be linked to your COGS account. Income for that item can be linked to any of your QuickBooks income accounts.
2. Use the Tools... System Settings... Expense Categories screens to link your expense category in BigTime to this new COGS-based item from QuickBooks.

Once you do that, your expenses will accrue against your COGS account in QuickBooks, and your bills will still support the "billable" field.

Importing Vendor Expenses, Step-by-Step

You can see what unbilled "QuickBooks" expenses exist in that system from the Tools... Invoices, Create Drafts screen. The final column on that grid shows you the unbilled QuickBooks expenses that need to be imported for every project in the system. To import expenses (for a single project or for all of the projects in the system), just follow these steps.

1. Click on the "import vendor expenses" hot link at the bottom of the page.

   

2. From the list of expenses you see on screen, check off the items you'd like to invoice in BigTime. Note that you can also click the "select all" button at the top of the page to import all unbilled QuickBooks expenses.
3. When you've selected the expenses you'd like to import, click the POST button at the top of the screen.
4. The system will queue up your request and let you know when it's completed.

Once vendor expenses have been imported from QuickBooks, the "billing status" on those expenses is now controlled by BigTime. Those expenses now behave just like BigTime expenses. They can be edited, marked up, re-classified, marked as "no-charge," invoiced or deleted.

When these expenses show up on a BigTime invoice, the "staff member" name that appears next to a BigTime expense is replaced with your "vendor name" from QuickBooks.

Editing Vendor Expenses

You can edit those expenses (changing the date, the amount, the category or budget item links, etc.) in BigTime, but any edits you make will not flow back into QuickBooks. That's because QuickBooks doesn't support a "payable" vs. "billable" amount, and BigTime does. So, any edits you make to the billable amounts are stored in BigTime, but they don't change the "payable" in QuickBooks.