In some cases you may incur costs on a particular service you offer that you would like to rebill to your client. This is a common scenario for many businesses that provide consultancy based services or perhaps work on longer term projects for clients. These types of costs can include things like travel expenses, refreshments, sub-contracted work as well as physical materials.
Prefer to watch?
Prefer a video walkthrough? Watch our How to Rebill Expenses in QuickFile | Step-by-Step Guide tutorial on the QuickFile Help Guides YouTube channel.
How to Rebill Expenses
Rebilling your expenses is simple in QuickFile. You can select up to 50 expenses to rebill on a single client invoice.
- Go to Purchases > Show all purchases to open the Purchase Management screen.
- Tick the purchases you would like to rebill to your client. Paid and unpaid purchases can be rebilled together.
- Click More Options > Rebill to client.
A Rebill Selected Expenses dialog opens with a few different options.
- In Rebill to client, start typing the name of the client you’d like to rebill these expenses to and choose them from the list. Click [Change] to pick a different client.
- Optionally, enter a Percentage Markup to add on to the original prices. If you’d prefer to rebill at cost price, leave the percentage as zero.
- Optionally, tick Contra Expenses. This is only offered when the markup is zero (see the note below).
- Choose Rebill as: Physical items (the default) or Billable time. This option determines the layout of the sales invoice itemised section, i.e. for items (e.g. materials, fuel costs, parking tickets etc) or time-based invoicing (e.g. per hour).
- Tick Attach any receipt scans to the sales invoice if you want to take any receipt scans from the original expense records and make them available on the new sales invoice.
- Click Create Invoice.
Example: A purchase of £19.20 rebilled with a Percentage Markup of 10 appears on the invoice with a Unit Cost of £21.12, before VAT.
Please note: If there’s no markup, you’ll be given the option to contra the expenses. This will create the sales invoice using the same nominal codes as the original purchase invoice, rather than posting the lines to General Sales. The option isn’t shown when a markup is entered. Please be aware of any HMRC rules that may affect your use of this feature. If you’re unsure, you may wish to consult your accountant. Find out how to handle disbursements in QuickFile
The sale invoice composer opens with the item lines pre-populated from the original purchases. With Physical items, each line shows the purchase’s receipt number in Item and its description in Description, with the net amount as the Unit Cost and a quantity of 1.
With Billable time, the lines use Task, Notes, Rate and Hours columns instead. The Rate is the purchase amount and the Hours is 1.
- Amend, remove or add items as needed. Nothing is saved until you click Save Details.
- Click Save Details to save your draft sales invoice.
And that’s all there is to it, your rebilled expenses are now ready to be sent to the client.
Important: QuickFile doesn’t mark a purchase as rebilled or link it to the invoice created from it, and the same purchase can be rebilled again. Keep track of which purchases you’ve already rebilled so you don’t bill a client twice.
VAT Treatment
If you are VAT registered, QuickFile will automatically rebill the expenses inclusive of VAT. This will happen regardless of whether or not the original expense invoices include VAT or not. You can change the VAT rate on each line in the invoice composer before you save. There are only limited circumstances whereby an expense can be rebilled without VAT, these are referred to as disbursements. It’s advisable to check with HMRC if you’re unsure.
Please note: The rebilling feature is only supported in GBP.
Related topics
Rebilled expenses start as purchases and end as sales invoices. These articles cover both ends, plus handling VAT-free disbursements.
- How to record disbursements: Pass on costs as a disbursement, without VAT, when the rules allow it.
- Recording your purchases: Enter the purchase invoices you want to rebill.
- Projects in QuickFile: Tag purchases and sales to a project and report on its profitability.
- Business mileage expense: Record mileage costs, including passing them on to a client.