Vendor Bills and Receipt Charges

Important: This is an early-release feature and is subject to change. You are free to use it now and provide your feedback to Home Watch IT, but there may still be small hidden bugs in the product. Once it is considered stable and “General Release,” this message will be removed.

What this is for

A plumber hands your technician an invoice for $100 while they are at a customer’s home. You want three things to happen:

1. A record of it in Home Watch IT, with a photo of the paper invoice.
2. The customer charged for it — say $122.50 after your markup.
3. The cost recorded in your accounting system, if you use one.

Vendor Bills does all three from one screen. You fill it in once, at the moment the vendor hands the paper over.

Note

Depending on your setup, your screen may say Receipt Charges instead of Vendor Bills. Both work the same way — see Why does my screen say something different? below.

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Before your first bill: set up your expense item (QuickBooks and Zoho Books only)

If you use QuickBooks Online or Zoho Books, each vendor bill is sent across as a bill in your books. Your accounting system needs to know which item the cost belongs to — Home Watch IT calls that the expense item. It will never guess one for you: a bill with no expense item saves in Home Watch IT as normal, but shows Blocked and does not post until one is set.

This is a one-time job for the office, done once for the whole company. Technicians in the field never need to think about it. If you skip it, your very first bill will be Blocked with the message “No expense item is set on this bill, on the vendor, or as the company default.” That is not an error — it is Home Watch IT waiting for this setup.

Step 1 — Make at least one item purchasable in your accounting system

Most service items are set up for sales only, so they cannot be used on a bill. Pick the item (or items) you want vendor costs recorded against and make it purchasable:

• QuickBooks Online: open Products & Services, edit the item, tick “I purchase this product/service from a vendor”, choose the expense account, and save.
• Zoho Books: open Items, edit the item, fill in the Purchase Information (purchase account and cost), and save.

Many companies create one item just for this, for example “Vendor costs” or “Subcontractor expense”, and use it for everything. Others make their usual service items two-sided so the cost and the customer charge use the same item. Either works.

Step 2 — Wait for the sync

Home Watch IT reads your item list from the accounting system automatically. The item becomes available in the expense item pickers after the next sync, usually within a few hours. Nothing to press.

Step 3 — Choose the company default in Settings

Open Settings in Home Watch IT and choose the item from the Default expense item dropdown. Every vendor bill will now post against that item unless you say otherwise.

That is all most companies ever need. Two optional refinements:

• A default for one vendor. Open the vendor from the Vendors page and choose a Default expense item for them. Bills for that vendor use it instead of the company default.
• A different item on one bill. The bill screen has an Expense item dropdown. Leave it blank on almost every bill; use it only when one bill belongs somewhere unusual.

Home Watch IT checks these three places in order — the bill, then the vendor, then the company default — and uses the first one it finds.

Tip

Any bill that was Blocked for a missing expense item will post by itself once the setup is complete. You do not need to reopen or resave it.

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Recording a vendor bill

On a computer

1. Open the customer, or open the report for the visit.
2. Go to the Vendor Bills tab (or section, if you are inside a report).
3. Press Add.
4. Fill in the vendor, the invoice number, the date and the amount.
5. Press Attach receipt and choose the photo or PDF.
6. If you want to charge the customer, turn on Bill the customer and set your markup.
7. Press Save.

On a phone or tablet

1. Open the report for the visit.
2. Find the Vendor Bills strip — it shows a count and a total, like Vendor Bills (2) · 367.50.
3. Tap the + to add one, or tap the strip to see the list.
4. Fill it in the same way as above and Save.

You can save a bill with no signal. It will appear straight away and send itself to the office when you are back online. The photo is the one exception — it needs a connection, and the screen will tell you it is still to come.

If you see a warning about the expense item

On QuickBooks and Zoho Books companies, the bill screen may show a message saying no expense item is set, or that no item is set up for purchases. Save the bill anyway. The warning is for the office, not the technician — the bill records normally, the customer charge is created, and the bill simply waits as Blocked until the office finishes the one-time expense item setup.

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Charging the customer

Turn on Bill the customer and you will see three fields:

Field	What it does
Item	Which of your service items the charge appears as on the invoice
Markup %	A percentage added to the vendor’s amount
Flat	A fixed amount added on top

The screen shows you the final figure as you type. The sum is:

vendor’s amount + markup % + flat = what your customer pays

So $100 with 15% and $7.50 flat becomes $122.50.

That charge then behaves exactly like any other unbilled item on the customer’s account, and appears on their next invoice.

Tip

If you always mark up the same way for a particular customer — or for one particular vendor at that customer — you can set that up once so it fills in automatically. See Can I set a default markup? below.

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Sending the receipt to your customer

Tick Include vendor invoice on the client invoice and the photo you attached is sent to your customer along with their invoice, as backup for the charge.

Handing the client the actual vendor invoice is normal practice for pass-through billing, and it is often the thing that stops a charge being queried.

The tickbox only becomes available once you have attached a receipt. You can set your preferred default under Settings, so it is already ticked on every new bill.

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Your vendor list

If you have a vendor list, there is a Vendors page in the side menu. It shows every vendor with a search box and four filters:

• Active — vendors you can currently pick
• COI expired — vendors whose insurance certificate has run out
• Excluded — vendors you have hidden from the picker
• Inactive — vendors no longer in use

Open any vendor to record insurance details — whether you have their certificate, when it expires, and whether you are named as additional insured. Nothing else tracks this, and knowing a vendor’s insurance has lapsed before you send them to a client’s property is the reason the page exists.

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Frequently asked questions

Why does my screen say Receipt Charges instead of Vendor Bills?

Because you do not have an accounting system connected. The screen is simpler: you type the vendor’s name instead of picking from a list, and nothing is sent anywhere outside Home Watch IT.

Everything else is identical — you still attach the receipt, still charge your customer with a markup, and the receipt still goes out with the invoice Home Watch IT sends.

There are three possible setups:

Your accounting system	Vendor list	Cost sent to accounting
QuickBooks Online or Zoho Books	Pulled in from there automatically	Yes, as a bill
HWIT Invoicing	You build and manage it yourself	No — there is nowhere to send it
None	No list — you type the vendor’s name	No

How do I add a vendor?

If you use QuickBooks or Zoho: you don’t, and there is deliberately no button for it. Vendors are created in your accounting system and pulled into Home Watch IT automatically. This is on purpose — it means three technicians can’t enter the same plumber three different ways.

If a vendor you just created isn’t showing yet, wait for the next sync.

If you use HWIT Invoicing: there is an Add button on the Vendors page, because Home Watch IT is where your vendor list lives.

If you have no accounting system: there is no vendor list. Just type the name.

Can I edit a vendor’s name, address or phone number?

If you use QuickBooks or Zoho: no. Those details are shown but greyed out, under a note saying they are managed in your accounting system. If you changed them here they would be overwritten the next time the two systems sync, so the screen doesn’t let you try.

Change them in your accounting system and they’ll update here on the next sync.

The insurance details, notes and the picker exclusion are yours to edit — your accounting system has nowhere to store those.

If you use HWIT Invoicing: yes, everything is editable.

Can I set a default markup?

Yes, and there are two levels:

• A default for the whole customer. On the customer’s screen, just above the linked vendors, set a default markup % and/or flat amount. This becomes the starting point for every vendor you bill for that customer.
• An override for one vendor at that customer. On that same screen — or from the vendor’s own page, under its Customers section — edit that vendor’s markup to set a different rate just for them, for example if one contractor always costs more than the rest. Leave it blank to keep using the customer’s default; anywhere you see “(customer default)” next to a vendor, that’s what it’s currently using.

Whichever applies fills in automatically on a new bill for that vendor and customer. These are defaults for new bills only — changing either one does not alter a bill you have already saved.

What is the Expense item field?

Only QuickBooks Online and Zoho Books companies see this. It tells your accounting system which item — and therefore which expense account — the vendor’s cost belongs to.

Leave it blank on the bill and Home Watch IT uses the vendor’s default expense item, then your company default from Settings. Most companies set the company default once and never touch this field again. It is there for the occasional bill that doesn’t belong where that vendor’s costs normally go.

If you have not set a company default yet, see Before your first bill. If the dropdown is empty, see the next question.

The Expense item dropdown is empty

The list only offers items your accounting system will accept on a bill. In QuickBooks that means the item has “I purchase this product/service from a vendor” ticked; in Zoho Books it means the item has Purchase Information filled in.

Most service items are set up for sales only, which is why the list usually starts out empty. This is normal for a new company. Tick that box on at least one item in your accounting system and it will appear here after the next sync, usually within a few hours. Then choose it as the Default expense item in Settings. The full steps are in Before your first bill.

A bill says “No expense item is set on this bill, on the vendor, or as the company default”

This is the message every QuickBooks or Zoho Books company sees on its first bill if the office has not yet done the expense item setup. It is not an error and nothing has been lost: the bill is saved, the customer charge exists, and the receipt is attached. The bill is just waiting to be told which item to post against.

To clear it, the office does three things once: make an item purchasable in the accounting system, wait for the sync, and choose that item as the Default expense item in Settings. The blocked bill then posts by itself on the next attempt. No need to reopen it.

My technician saw a warning about the expense item. Did the bill save?

Yes. The warning tells them the bill will not post to your accounting system yet, but Save still works and the bill, the receipt and the customer charge are all recorded. The bill shows as Blocked in the office until the expense item setup is done, then posts by itself.

Who sets the expense item — the technician or the office?

The office, once, in Settings. Technicians should leave the Expense item field blank and save. Coding the cost is a bookkeeping decision, and the company default handles it for every bill without anyone in the field having to choose.

What do the coloured labels on each bill mean?

Two different things are being reported.

About the customer charge:

Label	Meaning
Unbilled	The charge exists and will appear on the customer’s next invoice
Invoiced	The charge has already gone out on an invoice
Customer charge removed	Someone deleted the charge; reopen the bill and save it to recreate it

About your accounting system (only shown if you use QuickBooks or Zoho):

Label	Meaning
Waiting to post	Queued; it will go across shortly
Posted	It is in your accounting system
Blocked	Something needs fixing first — open the bill to see what
Failed	A temporary problem; it will try again on its own

A bill says Blocked. What do I do?

Open it and read the message — it says exactly what is wrong in plain English. By far the most common cause is no expense item set anywhere, which means the office has not done the one-time setup yet. The other causes are an item that has since lost its purchase setup in the accounting system, or a vendor that only exists in Home Watch IT and not in your books.

Fix the cause and it will go through by itself on the next attempt. You don’t need to press anything or resave the bill.

Can I change a bill after the customer has been invoiced?

Not the parts that affect the money. Once the charge is on an invoice you have sent, the amount, the markup, the item and the “bill the customer” switch are all locked.

This is deliberate: if they could still move, the bill and the invoice you already sent would quietly disagree with each other. To change what a customer was charged, handle it on the invoice itself.

What happens if I delete a bill?

The Delete button asks twice. The first press turns it red and it reads Really Delete? — nothing happens until you press it again.

• If the customer charge has not been invoiced yet, both are deleted.
• If it has been invoiced, the charge stays where it is and only the bill record is removed. The line beside the button tells you which will happen before you commit.

Do I have to attach a photo?

No. The bill saves perfectly well without one. You just won’t be able to send a receipt to your customer, and you won’t have the paperwork on file.

You can add, replace or remove the photo later.

Can a vendor upload their own invoice instead of us keying it in?

Yes, if you’ve sent them their vendor portal link. They can attach their invoice or receipt directly, with an invoice number and amount if they have them. It arrives here as a new bill for the office to finish — set the markup and decide whether to bill the customer — the same as any bill you’d enter yourself.

I recorded a bill in the field but the photo didn’t attach

Photos need a connection; the rest of the bill does not. If you were out of signal, the screen will have told you the photo was still to come. Open the bill again once you have signal and attach it.

Should I record a vendor bill on the customer or on the report?

Either — it is the same bill either way.

• Recorded from a report, it is attached to that visit, and the report’s list shows only that visit’s bills.
• Recorded from the customer, it is attached to the customer generally.

The customer’s Vendor Bills tab always shows all of their bills, whichever way they were recorded.

We just connected QuickBooks. What happens to our old receipt charges?

Nothing, and that’s on purpose. Everything you recorded before stays exactly as it is and is not sent to QuickBooks.

You may already have entered, paid or categorised those costs in your books, and replaying them would create duplicates. New bills from now on will use the full accounting-connected behaviour.

Can I split one vendor bill across two customers?

No. One bill creates one customer charge. If a vendor’s invoice covers two properties, record it as two bills with the appropriate amount on each.

Where does the receipt photo end up?

• In Home Watch IT, always, attached to the bill.
• On your customer’s invoice, if you ticked the box.
• On the bill in your accounting system, if you use QuickBooks or Zoho — so your bookkeeper has the paperwork alongside the cost entry.

The photo is never attached to your customer’s invoice unless you ask for it, because your invoice shows the marked-up amount and the vendor’s shows the original.