How to bill a client for reimbursable expenses as independent contractor?

Legger
Legger Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

Howdy everybody,

I'm an independent contractor with a dozen clients. One of them is asking me to send them an Invoice for my reimbursable expenses instead of the Expense Report that I had been sending them in the past. I had created my own report using Excel but want to use Expensify for all of my Invoicing/Expense Reports from now on.

I created an expense report on Expensify only have it be rejected as they had changed their policies. When I resubmitted it as an Invoice (which I did by simply renaming it as "Invoice for expenses for Greece Trip", they rejected it again because it didn't have a Due Upon Receipt, a unique Invoice # and today's date on it.

Please help,

Steve

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Best Answer

  • Stephanie Elliot
    Stephanie Elliot Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 84 Expensify Team
    edited September 2020 Answer ✓

    Hey @Legger! Happy to get a little more specific on this for you. First things first, have you enabled invoicing on your policy? If not, you’ll want to do that - you can find a guide on how to send an invoice here

    As for generating a unique invoice identifier, you can use the Report ID. For context, the Report ID is a unique number that appears at the top-left corner of all reports and invoices. 

    To make that Report ID extra visible for your client and to add the date of the invoice’s submission, I would recommend building that information into your Default Report Title. As an example, you could use the formula: Legger {report:submit:date} Invoice #{report:id} to populate the report title "Legger 2019-08-18 Invoice #123456". To customize your Default Report Title even further, check out the full list of custom formulas.

    You can add any notes “due upon receipt”, etc., to the memo section of the Invoice.


    Between the Default Report Title and the Memo section of the Invoice, you should be able to include any peripheral information you'd like on your invoices.

Answers

  • Isabela Stisser
    Isabela Stisser Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 200 Expensify Team
    edited September 2020

    Hey @Legger Steve, thanks for posting to the Community! 👋

    Good news, Expensify's invoicing feature is available on both group and individual policies. This features allows you to create and send invoices, which can be sent to anyone, whether or not they have an Expensify account. 

    You can invoice your clients and charge them outside of Expensify. Check out this help article for more information about this.

    Let me know if you have any other questions, and I will be happy to help!

  • Legger
    Legger Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

    I've already looked at those answers and tips as well as online video tutorials but I can't find one that addresses my concerns:

    1 - how to build unique numbers for invoices and have Expensify track and create them?

    2 - how to add a line that says Due Upon Receipt {or, 2/10 net 30,etc.)?

    3 - Have today's date on it.

    I'd like to see all of these items in a clear format that my clients would readily see. Im sure there has to be a way for Expensify to do this but I don't see it after poking around and using the search engine.


    Finally, I would like to see some tutorials titled self-employed and address are individual needs. I understand this product allows me to bill anyone but the way that a lot of your instruction is written it's for internal employees.

    Thanks y'all,

    Legger

  • Legger
    Legger Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

    Hi Steph,

    Thank you so much. These look like the answers for which I was looking. It looks like it is all about the default. I was looking for that but to no avail. I'll try that and report back but I think this will work.

    Also, this will help a TON of other IC's in my industry. Do you have a referral program so I can get some sort of credit for recommending your products?

    Cheers,

    Steve

  • Christina Dobryzynski
    Christina Dobryzynski Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 267 Expensify Team

    Hey there  @Legger !

    I just wanted to send a quick follow up to you about our invoices because we've made some recent changes that might solve some of your outstanding requests.

    1 - how to build unique numbers for invoices and have Expensify track and create them?

    We don't have a method to create unique numbers for an invoice, but you can add a PO Number that will be used on all invoices.

    If you have multiple clients, it could be an option to create a policy for each client and then create a PO Number for each client.

    2 - how to add a line that says Due Upon Receipt {or, 2/10 net 30,etc.)?

    Each invoice will have an option to set a Due Date before you send the invoice.


    3 - Have today's date on it.

    Each invoice will have the date you created the invoice displayed in the Comments section of the invoice.


    Phew! Lots of information. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about these updates.