When your QuickBooks Online account is integrated with Monograph, it's easy to send expenses to QBO for recording bills and purchases.
📚 The steps in this article are specific for recording expenses in QBO, which is different than mapping Expenses to QBO Services for Invoicing purposes.
Setting Up Expense Types
When QuickBooks Online is connected, the Expense Type section can be found by navigating to Settings > QuickBooks > Expense Types. Here, a Quickbooks Credit Account can be set up for both Reimbursable Expenses and Non-reimbursable Expenses.
Reimbursable Expenses will be imported as bills in QuickBooks and can be associated with Accounts Payable or Liability accounts.
Non-reimbursable Expenses will be imported as expenses in QuickBooks can be associated with Asset accounts.
In order for an Accounts Payable account to appear as an option in the Reimbursable expenses drop-down, the specified account must have Account.Classification set to Liability and Account.AccountSubType set to AccountsPayable.
In order for an account to appear as an option in the Non-reimbursable expenses drop-down, the specified account must have Account.Classification set to Asset.
How to Update Account.Classification in QuickBooks Online
How to Update Account.Classification in QuickBooks Online
To set the Account.Classification in QuickBooks Online, navigate to Transactions > Chart of Accounts > Edit Account. Once here, use the Account type dropdown to select the account.
Setting Up Expense Categories
When adding Expense Categories in Settings, a QuickBooks Service and Quickbooks Account can be associated with each expense if QBO is connected.
The Quickbooks Service is used specifically for invoicing purposes, while the Quickbooks Account is used specifically for sending Bills and Expenses (Purchases) to QBO.
Navigate to Settings > QuickBooks > Expense Categories and use the dropdown for each Expense Category to update the QuickBooks Account associated with each expense.
Some examples of QBO Accounts are:
Cost of Labor
Insurance
Permits
Sending Expenses to QuickBooks Online
Expenses can only be sent to QuickBooks Online after QuickBooks Accounts are set up within Monograph's Settings.
After your Expense Types and QuickBooks Accounts have been set up for expenses, they can be sent from Monograph to QuickBooks Online.
To do this, navigate to the Expense Report (Money > Costs > Expenses) and click Send to QuickBooks in the upper right corner.
A new page will appear to show any expenses that have not previously been sent to QuickBooks Online. Here, you'll be able to see which QuickBooks Destination each expense will be associated with (which is determined by the Client or QBO Project or QBO sub-customer that is associated with the project in Monograph).
If needed, the Quickbooks Account for each expense can be changed by using the drop-down.
Once an expense has been sent to QuickBooks Online, the QB icon will appear to the left of the "Name" column for the expense.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why aren't COGS accounts appearing as options for mapping expenses?
At this time, expenses can only be mapped to QBO Expense accounts - they cannot be mapped to COGS accounts.
What is the difference between bills and expenses?
It's best practice to create reimbursable expenses as "Bills" that are meant to be paid back to employees later. Non-reimbursables, typically paid for on a corporate card, are created as "Expenses" that have already been incurred.