In this article we’ll be showing you how to post your reimbursable expenses from BigTime into your QuickBooks file so it may generate a check or bill against the appropriate Vendor or Employee.
INTEGRATION MANAGEMENT DELEGATES THE FLOW OF EXPENSES
After your initial BigTime integration with QuickBooks, you will setup the default accounts that checks and bills should be associated with. The System Administrator can navigate to MY COMPANY... INTEGRATIONS. Click on the QuickBooks product you are currently using (QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop). Click the MANAGE hyperlink inside the product integration page. The system will automatically load specific integration settings that delegate which accounts the expenses will be associated with.
A frame will pop up, with tabs allowing you to setup GENERAL, TIME/EXPENSE, VENDOR BILLS or INVOICING settings. Click on TIME/EXPENSE and you’ll see the picklist menus. This is where you will set the specific Checking and Accounts Payable accounts needed in order to post expenses. This setting will be the default account that BigTime will always post to.
Tip: In this area you can also set up the requirement that timesheets or expenses must be approved before a request to post can be to QuickBooks.
Unique Integration of the BigTime Staffer
One important property of BigTime that can have a one-to-many relationship with QuickBooks is the source of the expenses. And that is the BigTime Staffer.
A BigTime staffer can be integrated with multiple records: an Employee, a Vendor, or both. If a BigTime staffer is integrated with an Employee record only, all his/her expenses will go into QuickBooks as a check. If the user is integrated solely with a vendor record, then the user’s expenses will go into QuickBooks as a bill payable to the Vendor. If however, the BigTime staffer is linked with both an employee and a vendor record, the timesheets will go against the employee record, and the expenses will go into QuickBooks as a bill payable to that particular vendor record.
Expense Codes
Expense codes are required field be integrated in order to post expenses. The expense codes within BigTime describe the type of expense that the user is submitting. For example, it can be Travel:Mileage or Office Expenses. These codes are pre-populated but are not automatically integrated with QuickBooks. These default values can be deleted, renamed, and integrated with Other Charge items of QuickBooks or Expense Accounts.
To integrate the expense codes, the system Administrator can navigate to MY COMPANY...FIELD VALUES...EXPENSE CODES.
Clicking on the name of the Expense code will show you GENERAL INFORMATION, where you can select the QuickBooks link under the header SERVICE ITEM. This picklist will show your active QuickBooks item list, as well as Expense accounts that are available to integrate with.
Credit Cards
Credit cards are another type of expense that can be posted to QuickBooks. The ability to create credit card expense entries is not available to the end user until the credit cards are setup. To set up credit cards, the system Administrator can go to MY COMPANY...FIELD VALUES and click on the FIELD VALUES header. To create credit cards, click on the CREDIT CARDS sub-header, and then click ADD NEW VALUE. The Administrator only needs to specify a name, a QuickBooks link, and also has the option to allow all users to log to the credit card or just specific users.
1. Click on the QuickBooks tab on the navigation bar at the top of the page. Select POST EXPENSES.
2. Select the expenses you wish to post to QuickBooks. Click on the checkbox next to the EXPENSE to select it.
3. Click POST SELECTED EXPENSES to submit them to QuickBooks. This button is located at the top left of the screen.
Once a transaction of expenses is requested to be posted to QuickBooks, there are three available states the expense report can go through:
Pending: A pending post transaction occurs directly after the Financial Administrator selects POST EXPENSES. The icon next to an expense report spins with animation until it lands on a cloud icon that is light gray.
Success: If the request made to QuickBooks has succeeded, the icon will change from a gray cloud to a green check mark.
Failure: If your request to QuickBooks has returned as failed , the gray cloud will change to a red cloud icon.
If you hover over the red cloud, you will see an error message that explains the specific things that need to be done in order to get the expense posted over correctly. Once the corrections are made, the Financial Administrator can then re-post the transaction.
Correcting a Posted Expense Report
Once a post has been successful, the hand-off is complete. If any corrections need to be made on a posted expense report, the expense will have to be deleted from QuickBooks and then posted again from BigTime. This will generate a new expense.
To do this, the Financial Administrator can go to QUICKBOOKS...POST EXPENSES and check the box next to the name of the expense report to be reposted. Checking the box activates the option to mark an expense report as unposted. Click the MARK AS UNPOSTED button to access the option to post the transaction again.
Alert: If you do not delete the originally posted report from within QuickBooks, this will result in a duplicate check or bill being generated in the file. Always remember to delete the first expense posted.