Billable Expenses - Show Bills that have and haven't been assigned as billable expenses
To have a list that shows bills that have and haven’t been assigned to billable expenses.
Purpose: Users can easily identify which bills that have and haven’t been assigned to billable expenses.

Hi everyone, thanks for your contributions to this idea. We appreciate your feedback about the challenges in ensuring all billable costs are recovered, and your desire for an improved experience.
As noted by others in the idea, there are some features that will give some visibility of billable expenses at present.
- You can 'View bills not assigned to projects', and
- there is the Outstanding billable expense report as some have shared which shows outstanding items you've assigned as billable to customers
Understanding the value more visibility of unassigned bills would have for customers, this is something we’ll continue to review in future planning but isn’t in the current roadmap. We'll be sure to update you all if this gets picked up.
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Alasdair Macdonald commented
I agree with both Sue Skinner and David Shipman. This feature was on the Classic Invoicing and at no point were discussions held with us or information given that this feature would no longer be available when you closed Classic Invoicing.
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Sue Skinner commented
I couldn't agree more with David Shipman's comments. Despite this issue as being marked as critical for our business it isn't on your roadmap?!!!! This is one of the most patronising responses I think I have ever heard. Both solutions suggested by Xero do not resolve the problem in the slightest. Most of us don't use projects and we know the items that we have assigned - we simply want to know which ones we have missed? How difficult can this possibly be for a technical company??? We just want a simple report that highlights bills that have not been assigned to a client. This response from Xero pretty much says get stuffed - we will just do what we want. Very disappointed and no I will not recommend you to any other company.
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David Shipman commented
So it is "accepted" but "not in the roadmap"? Just as much a kick in the face really.
Both "features" identified are useless to most (based on my understanding of this thread) users - most don't have the "projects" functionality, and outstanding billable expenses are only any use if they are already flagged as billable!!
Come on Xero, stop all the expensive Facebook ads flogging your solution to resellers for the quick profits forcing solutions onto the masses as a "one size fits none" and do something for those of us who just want a little bit of support in managing our small businesses as efficiently as we can, most of whom have been paying out for years for ever decreasing amounts of respect.
I started out with Xero recognising it as a step change for small business, and now find myself resenting being trapped into your big business scam mentality.
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Sue Skinner commented
Very much doubt it. Despite it being a critical issue to small businesses.
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Jane Mitchell commented
17 months since this was last commented on by xero..... is this being worked on at all??
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David Shipman commented
Exactly. So this remains a feature that generates significant interest but one that Xero aren't even prepared to roadmap in favour of "big pieces of work" (read, "things you aren't after but we'll charge you more for anyway"!). It would be trivial to add a flag in the transactions page to show ithe client billing status of each line, and only a little less trivial to add a report on expenses by billable category, but the so-called "keen eyes" on this important need haven't resulted in any update in nearly 18 months so I'm not going to hold my breath.
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Ken Eason commented
Joanne, thanks for the clarification regarding using Projects.
There is another Xero report "Billable Expenses - Outstanding" that shows costs that were marked billable when a Bill to Pay or Spend Money transaction is posted, but have not been invoiced to a contact.
Access this report from the Dashboard, Accounting, Reports, Payables and receivables, Billable Expenses - Outstanding. See attached file.
This shows transactions marked billable but not yet invoiced, even if the "Decide customer later" selection was made when assigning the transaction as billable. See attached files.
Not sure how this would work for you with using Tracking Categories.
The issue of how to find billable costs that were NOT marked billable when a Bill to Pay or Spend Money transaction is posted would still not be identified with this report.
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Joanne Irvine commented
I do book keeping for a number of clients - most do not use "Projects" - they use Tracking Categories.
The report Ken refers to is only available if you subscribe to Projects.
There is no report that a Billable expenses assigned to a Client can be used to check all expenses have been included on an invoice.
It is very time consuming to manually check all expenses are assigned.
Xero - can you please review this idea again - it is now over 3 years since originally submitted. Great to have all the new innovation, but for me this would be an important time saving report.
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Ken Eason commented
This report does exist, but needs some additional functionality.
To view the report, click on the three little dots at the far right upper corner of the Bill screen. This brings up the menu options that include "View bills not assigned to projects". The attached screenshots show how to navigate to this option.
However, the report produced includes ALL accounts from Bills to Pay transactions. In our situation, this would include non-billable company G&A expense accounts.
Adding a "Filter" option to the report selection area to include options to filter by Account, Account Type, Item Code, etc. would make this report more useful.
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Frances Tolfree commented
Please can this be added as a report - its crazy that it doesn't exist
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Nova Borden commented
I would love to see this as well! It's not easy to search through bills trying to figure out which ones are missing being assigned to a customer. Please add this feature/report! Thanks!
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Jane Mitchell commented
Any update from Xero on this?
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Mark Russell commented
We've been pushing for this for 5 years, many messages, and it's shocking that Xero is ignoring such a commercially significant basic requirement, the absence of which could cause material business loss. It's like Xero doesn't even understand accounting. It's a critical issue and actually negligent of Xero to ignore what should be a fundamental feature of a good accounting system.
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Nick Straughan commented
Keen to find out how to list all expenses (from bank transactions) NOT assigned to a project, so I can check if any have been missed when reconciling
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Penelope Gardiner commented
Hi, We have started using Projects and very disappointed to see the General ledger reports do not have a column for "Projects" similar to the tracker codes. It is a big ommision in Xero Projects in my opinion. If means Bills may not be recovered from Clients!
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Charles Fazackerley commented
In theory all materials I purchase should be back charged to a customer but there is no way of searching for bills that are not assigned to a customer. It's our biggest cost leakage and I suspect it will be for many organisations until we get the functionality we need.
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Christopher Paulson commented
This functionality needs to be broadened - I'd suggest adding Project as a field in the FIND AND RECODE function, as is already the case for Category Tracking.
Need to be able to find any/all potential transactions that are missing a project assignment.
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Ken Eason commented
It's easy to miss the three little dots at the far right upper corner of the screen that brings up the menu options that include "View bills not assigned to projects" to produce the subject report. The attached screenshot shows how to navigate to this option.
However, the report produced includes ALL accounts from Bills to Pay transactions. In our situation, this would include non-billable company G&A expense accounts.
Adding a "Filter" option to the report selection area to include options to filter by Account, Account Type, Item Code, etc. would make this report more useful.
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Robb Fleischer commented
Yes, this is nuts. Xero support pages say: To find transactions in Xero that are not assigned to a project, navigate to the "Business" menu, select "Bills to pay", then click the menu icon and choose "View bills not assigned to projects" - this will display a list of bills that don't have a project associated with them; you can further filter by date range if needed.
But I can find this option anywhere. There is not point in using projects if you have not way of finding the exceptions. -
Meg Anderson commented
Yes, there is currently no simple way to do this, so it's incredibly easy to miss billing something back to the customer. You could also allow a way to set something so that charges automatically get billed to a customer, based on settings for that company or based on previous history?? Right now, accomplishing these tasks is incredibly time consuming.