There are three expense types to know about:
- Reimbursable expenses
- Non-reimbursable expenses
- Vendor expenses
This article will summarize each option, and point you to specific articles about each.
Reimbursable Expenses
Reimbursable expenses are paid back to the employee due to business costs they personally incurred.
Say Jason has a meeting in Boston and uses his own credit card to pay for his flight, hotel, and meals. When he returns, he’ll add an expense in BigTime to get reimbursed. This is an example of a reimbursable expense because Jason gets paid for his business expenses.
Non-Reimbursable Expenses
Non-reimbursable expenses are expenses that are incurred on a corporate credit card; the employee doesn’t receive any payment.
Jason uses his corporate credit card while in Florida to pay for his hotel, food, and transportation. Upon his return, he adds a charge in BigTime to log all of the charges he incurred on the trip.
This is an example of a non-reimbursable expense. In this situation, Jason doesn’t get paid. Instead, all of his expenses get posted to QuickBooks, where they’ll post to the corporate credit card account.
Vendor Expenses
Vendor expenses are expenses associated with a project and submitted as a bill from a vendor.
For example, say you have an engineering company. You’re working on a project that’ll use a specific type of concrete. You want a third party to advise you before you use it. The third-party will send you a bill, which you’ll log as a vendor expense in BigTime.
Vendor expenses give you the means to log third party expenses without relying on your accounting system to enter the vendor bill.