Many firms have vendors or contractors track their hours in BigTime. Since BigTime can track a staffer’s cost rate, we can calculate these hours and pool them together into a bill that’ll be posted to QuickBooks.
Vendor bills make it easy for financial admins, who can run a report to see how much they owe the vendor.
Note: BigTime also has vendor bills for expenses, which posts to QuickBooks based on expenses. In this article series, we’re focusing on vendor bills for time, which posts to QuickBooks based on time.
It’s also easy for staffers. That’s because nothing changes from the staffers point of view when logging time in a timesheet: staffers will enter and submit their time as usual. The review and approval process will also work the same way.
This article will show you how to activate and set up vendor bills for time.
First, let’s activate this feature.
1. Click MY COMPANY...MY COMPANY from your navigation bar.
2. Click ACTIVE FEATURES.
3. Then, flip the switch next to VENDOR BILL (TIME) to ON to activate this feature.
4. Then, click the blue SAVE button near the bottom-right of your window.
5. Now let’s navigate to your Staff List, where you’ll identify a staffer whose time you want to be converted to a vendor bill. Click MY COMPANY...STAFF LIST from your navigation bar.
6. Then, select a staffer from the list.
This will take you to the STAFF DASHBOARD.
7. The staffer must be linked to a vendor account in QuickBooks. So select your staffer’s name from the picklist under VENDOR and check the box next to POST TIME AS BILL.
In the example below, Vendor Two is selected to Post Time as Bill. They are also linked to their corresponding Vendor account within QuickBooks, and their cost rate is set to $60.00 per hour.
So when Vendor Two logs their time, it’ll be calculated based on the cost rate on the Staff Dashboard. But if there are custom rates set up on a Project then that cost rate will take priority over the staffer's base cost rate.
Customize Vendor Bills
Determine how you want your vendor bills for time to be summarized by following the steps below.
1. Click QUICKBOOKS...INTEGRATION SETTINGS from your navigation bar.
2. A new window will generate featuring a tile labeled QuickBooks. Click on the MANAGE hyperlink within the QuickBooks tile.
3. Click on the VENDOR BILLS tab at the top, and check the boxes next to as many settings as you’d like.
The settings you select will determine how your vendor bills are summarized.
4. Now, select your default accounts. Scroll to the bottom of your window to see the section labeled DEFAULT ACCOUNTS. Click the gray arrow on the right side of the box labeled BILLS/AP and select the option ACCOUNTS PAYABLE from the picklist. This is where the bills should be posted to. Then, follow the same steps to choose a DEFAULT SERVICE ITEM. Each time entry can be linked to a service item (via labor codes or via task). If you select this option, the service item will be posted when vendor bills are created. If not, then BigTime will use the "default" service item.
Say time is entered towards labor codes and those labor codes are linked to a service item. Then, BigTime knows to pull that service item. But if a service item does not apply to a line item, then BigTime pulls the default service item.
You can choose a reference number auto-numbering format. This isn’t required, but it’s useful for reporting and tracking your vendor bills.
The auto-numbering format system will work just like it does with other auto numbering systems in BigTime (Invoice Number and Project ID, for example). The only difference, in this case, is it only includes the format options for Year (Y), Month (M), and auto-increment value (P).
Now you’re ready to create a vendor bill.