This is something I was planning to do for a while. Unlike all other optional tabs which have New xyz buttons. Billable Expenses never had New Billable Expense button because billable expenses were recorded within other tabs.
So the latest version no longer contains Billable Expenses tab.
If you want to enable billable expenses in the latest version, once you add Customers tab to the left navigation.
There will be new option named Billable Expenses under Settings tab which will allow you to enable the functionality.
This change is made in the name of consistency and performance. Unlike all other tabs which simply count number of items within them. Billable expenses was a “weird” case because in order to calculate number of billable expenses, it would have to “scan” all receipts, payments, invoices and journal entries and look for billable expenses within them. That’s costly. Also enforcing overall consistency within the program makes it easier to add upcoming features that I have in mind. In other words, Billable Expenses should have never been a tab and it was standing in a way towards progress.
If you are not using billable expenses, then this change does not affect you. If you are using billable expenses, then it’s not currently possible to see billable expenses across all customers at once. Although I wonder whether it’s needed at all. Billable expenses tab was never needed for the workflow since recording new billable expenses was done in other tabs and invoicing was done through Customers tab. So it seems like billable expenses should have been always a report at most.
With this change, how should I bill an expense to a customer?
I am using Manager version 23.2.2.607, and under “Settings” I have “Billable Expense” enabled.
Be it recording a “Purchase Invoice” or recording a “Payment,” I cannot find a way to assign or link a “purchase invoice” or a “payment” to a customer. (I can optionally assign/link to a “project”, but since a “project” does not linked to a “customer”, I don’t see how linking to a project would make a purchase invoice or a payment billable.)
Ideally I would like to be able to link purchases to customers/projects (then hopefully be able to generate per-customer or per-project P&L statements down the road), and be able to separately decide whether to bill a purchase to a customer/project (i.e., allow for some purchases to be accounted as an “expense” for a customer/project without actually billing that purchase to that customer/project).
I readily admit to being a newbie using Manager, so my apologies for stupid questions, and thanks in advance for any advice from the more experienced users.
@lubos the old way was better, It was giving us better control, since we could have a better look to all billable accounts. Is there a choice to prevent back to the old way?
No, there is no such option. But you don’t need a separate tab. That tab did not list accounts. It listed transactions. Accounts associated with billable expenses are still listed on the Summary page. You can drill down to see individual customers.
