Add ability to select billable expense on payslip

Billable salary is not integrated in the “pay earnings items”. Can this be included in the upgrade please

Not sure what you mean by “pay earnings items” - there is nothing in Manager with that name

I mean payslip items in the Settings. When you click it, you’re given 3 selection payslip earnings items, payslip contribution and payslip deduction items (applicable in Philippine settings). It’s still a limitation in Manager where I can’t set up Billable expenses as part of the payslip earnings items so that I can easily track that billable salary is properly billed to client

My understanding is that this is when customer agrees to reimburse part of employee’s wages/salary.

I’m not sure how I feel about this or how common this is.

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@lubos, I believe this is a very bad idea. @Jason_de_Veyra’s desire seems rational at first glance. And it is common enough to charge labor directly to a customer. But using payslip earning items is not the way to do it. Not only would it ignore Manager’s existing structure for billable time and expenses, it would contradict fundamental accounting principles.

Billable expenses are entires for the purchase of goods or services on behalf of a customer that would otherwise be posted directly to an expense account of the business. They temporarily become assets, because they can later be invoiced to a customer, being turned into simultaneous postings to income and expenses. If they are not marked up, those income and expense entries cancel each other out. The important aspect of this is that funds left the business from a cash or bank account (a credit) to purchase the goods or services, balancing the original asset creation (a debit). So there are four accounts involved overall, two on the balance sheet and two on the profit and loss statement. This is explained in the relevant legacy Guide.

Payslip earnings items, on the other hand, involve no funds leaving the business. Instead, they create a liability to the employee, immediately offset by a corresponding posting to a wages or salaries expense account. The employee has created value through performance of labor, and the business has acquired that value by acknowledging its liability to pay the employee. Only when the liability is discharged via a paycheck is that liability cleared. This process is completely separate from invoicing a customer, and the debits and credits go to different accounts. Payslip earning items must still be entered; but of course, they debit an expense account, and they cannot credit the Billable expenses account because that is an asset account.

The proper method for recording work that will be reimbursed by a customer is with billable time. Just like billable expenses, a billable time entry creates an asset that can later be invoiced to a customer. But, as explained in the Notes of the legacy Guide, this is related to imputed income, because there has not yet been an actual financial transaction. That transaction occurs only when a sales invoice is created.

In summary, the key distinction between billable expenses and billable time is that billable expenses begin with an actual financial transaction. With billable time, the financial transaction comes afterwards. Billable expenses create assets. Payslip earning items create liabilities.

@lubos, I recommend you remove this from the ideas category. If necessary, please consult @tony on why the suggestion would not work.

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Manager is a truly capable system in many respects, however, it still leaves much to desire in two areas of interest to the vast majority of businesses, both large and small, namely:

  1. HR
  2. Production

I know manager isn’t an HR system, nor is it a production system, however, most other accounting software provide a bit more control over these two areas and it’s become expected.

I don’t specifically advocate for any specific treatment of this particular case, however, any forward movement in making Manager an easier tool for users to Manage all of their financial interactions with employees is welcome. And therefore, I think that this business problem deserves to be solved.

However, I completely agree with @lubos and @Tut on this, in that Payslips are not the right place to track billing of customers. Excuse me @Jason_de_Veyra for my poor choice of words, but this will only create a mess :sweat: :grimacing:

I mean @Tut made a good point and @lubos is probably thinking about how to disentagle the situation into a feasible implementation. I know I would.

This gets me to think, that maybe this could be the solution:

@Jason_de_Veyra , wouldn’t it be better if your employees filled up a Timesheet in manager, and these time sheets could be used as a source for both Payslips as well as for Billable Time? This may be the solution that you are looking for and it’s tidier and much more manageable, both in terms of development as well as for users to manage these kinds of situations, and this could be applied accross a variety of situations to link various tabs together like, for example, Projects to both Payslips and Billable Time – as the quoted topic title suggests.

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Sorry but the topic is about Billable Expense and @Tut’s answer is therefore supported.

Seemingly it’s about Billable Expense, but in reality it’s about Billable Time since the salaries of employees are the “Billable Expense” in this case:

@Jason_de_Veyra can you describe use-case? What is actually happening in the business that requires this?