Recording expenses in the LeanLaw platform is two-part: one part LeanLaw, one part QuickBooks Online. LeanLaw deals with two types of expenses, both of which end up on your client invoices:
Expenses created in LeanLaw (“soft” expenses): This is an expense that you want to be reimbursed for by your client, but you did not pay to a vendor. Examples can include general overhead charges, photocopies, or mileage.
Expenses created in QuickBooks (“hard” expenses): This is an actual expense that you paid or will pay to a vendor. Examples can include filing fees, expert witnesses, or court reports.
Getting Ready
Expenses, bills, and checks created in QuickBooks can be made available in LeanLaw for billing by setting up expense syncing in your LeanLaw settings.
We recommend having a separate account in QuickBooks and assigning all expenses that are billable to that account. Expense accounts are typically called “Prepaid Expenses,” “Reimbursable Expenses,” or “Advanced Client Cost.”
Note: LeanLaw Pro subscribers can also include expense receipts and other attachments on your LeanLaw invoices. Click here for more information.
1. QuickBooks Expense
In the below example, there are 2 expenses that are assigned to the “Advanced Client Cost” account: a $5,000 bill and another expense for $63.42.
Clicking on the $5,000 expense will show the details of the bill. In this example, the bill has been assigned to a specific client (0013- Client Example).
Note: Assigning expenses to clients from QuickBooks is only available to certain QuickBooks subscriptions. Don’t worry if your subscription doesn’t include this feature, you can assign the client from LeanLaw.
2. Navigate to the Expense tab in LeanLaw
There are 3 things to notice on this screen:
The $5,000 expense from QuickBooks is immediately visible and assigned to the correct client because LeanLaw watches the Advanced Client Costs account. Expenses originally entered in QuickBooks can be identified by the green QuickBooks logo on the left.
Another expense for this client is listed and does not have the green QuickBooks logo on the left. That’s because this expense was created directly in LeanLaw.
There is 1 unassigned billable expense in QuickBooks. You can click on Assign Expenses to open a new page and assign the expense.
3. Assign an Expense to a Client
Click on the expense to open a new pop-up window, which will allow you to assign it to a client.
4. Review Expenses before Billing
Once the expense is assigned to a client and saved, navigate back to the Expenses tab. In the below example, the client 0013-Client Example now reflects 3 total expenses: An expert witness, a lunch with the client, and mileage. All three were entered into LeanLaw in slightly different ways, but now they can all be billed to the client.
5. Bill the Expense to the Client
Navigate to the Billing tab. All 3 expenses are now included in an invoice that is Ready to Bill. Notice that if there are any additional unassigned expenses, you can also assign them from the Billing tab in the same way as shown above in the Expense tab.
Once the expenses are invoiced and sent to QuickBooks, the expenses created in QuickBooks will appear as line items in the expense account you created, and will cancel out the outgoing expense. This allows you to make sure that you’ve billed out all the expenses that were marked reimbursable. As long as outgoing expenses are assigned to the account, when the account balance is zero, it means all of the expenses were billed to the client.