You can track your bills and expenses via the Bills & Expenses tab within the Budget tab in your Project Financials.

This allows you to associate certain expenses and bills with specific line items in the budget populating your total costs in the budget Summary in the Cost to Date column.

Create a Bill or Expense

Click on the Financials section within a Project and navigate to the Bills & Expenses tab. Click + Add Item in the upper right.

Add an Expense

Choose + Add an Expense to start tracking items that have already been paid and include the date paid, the vendor, associations to budget items, and other details like receipts.

In order to save a new Expense, you must include the Vendor, Date paid, and Cost.

Vendor (or Payee)

Expenses must have a vendor/payee. You can either choose an existing vendor from your list or create a new one by typing it into the Vendor field. Simply hit the Enter key on your keyboard or click the "Create" option to save it as a new Vendor.

Your vendors are available to you across all of your projects. You cannot edit the vendor list at this time (coming soon!), but you can create as many new vendors as you need. Learn more about managing your BuildBook Vendors.

Date

This is the date you paid the Expense.

Budget Line Item

When you create an expense, you can optionally associate the expense with an existing line item in your budget in order to help track your cost to date.

When adding or editing an expense, click the "Budget Line Item" dropdown to search and select the item to associate the expense.

If you choose a line item that is a Selection Category and at least one selection exists, a "New Selection" field appears for you to choose the selection to associate the expense to.

If a selection doesn't exist, a new selection will be automatically created with a default name that includes the vendor name and date.

Description

The description is for any notes about the expense. The description appears underneath the Expense title in the Expenses tab and within a Selection.

Cost

This is the final expense amount that is used to track your costs throughout the project budget.

A single expense cannot be split across multiple budget items at this time, however, you can associate multiple expenses with the same budget line item.

Attachment

Any attachment can be added such as a PDF invoice, scanned receipt image, etc to show proof of the expense.

Edit an expense

You can edit an expense directly by clicking on the title of the expense, or you can access the same details by clicking on the name of the expense within any Budget line item or Selection. Edits are saved automatically.

Add a Bill

Click + Add a Bill to track outstanding items that need to be paid along with the due date, status, vendor, associations to budget items, and other details like receipts.

In order to save a new Bill, you must include the Vendor, Status, Bill Date, Due Date, and Cost

Vendor (or Payee)

Bills must have a vendor/payee. You can either choose an existing vendor from your list or create a new one by typing it into the Vendor field. Simply hit the Enter key on your keyboard or click the "Create" option to save it as a new Vendor.

If you are adding a vendor for the first time when creating a Bill, the vendor will appear in your Vendor list where you can edit their details.

Status

There are two status options for Bills: Paid and Unpaid.

Budget Line Item

When you create an expense, you can optionally associate the expense with an existing line item in your budget in order to help track your cost to date.

When adding or editing an expense, click the "Budget Line Item" dropdown to search and select the item to associate the expense.

If you choose a line item that is a Selection Category and at least one selection exists, a "New Selection" field appears for you to choose the selection to associate the Bill to.

If a selection doesn't exist, a new selection will be automatically created with a default name that includes the vendor name and date.

Bill Date

The date the Bill was received.

Due Date

The date the Bill amount is due to the vendor.

Bill Number

The bill number associated with the bill for accounting/tracking purposes

Description

The description is for any notes about the Bill. The description appears underneath the Bille title in the Bills + Expenses tab and within a Selection.

Cost

This is the final expense amount that is used to track your costs throughout the project budget.

Attachment

Any attachment can be added such as a PDF invoice, scanned receipt image, etc to show proof of the Bill.

Splitting Bills and Expenses

Bills and expenses can now be split across multiple budget line items. The process is identical for both bills and expenses!

To split a bill or expense, start by creating a new bill (or expense):

A new section appears at the bottom of the modal for Budget Line Items. By default, the only "line item" is Unassociated Cost. Adding a value here works the same as putting in a cost without a budget line item in the previous system. Part or all of a bill or expense can be unassociated. Unassociated costs do not count against budget line items and show up as Unassociated Costs on the Summary of the Budget.

To add cost to a budget line item, click the "+ Add a Budget Line Item" button below Unassociated Cost.

This opens a dropdown with all budget line items for your project. Select one to continue, then enter the cost in the associated cost field. As costs are entered, the total in the bottom right increases.

Multiple budget line items can be added to a single bill and the total will continue to increase accordingly.

Once the bill (or expense) is saved, it appears in the table with the alphabetical first budget line item appearing in the associated column. If there are additional line items, "+ x more" will appear. Clicking this opens the bill or expense to show all budget line items.

Add Bills and Expenses to Selections

In addition to the Bills & Expenses tab within Financials, they can also be added inside of your Selections by opening an individual selection and clicking + Add Item in the bottom left. From here, choose if you'd like to track a Bill or an Expense.

Selections display bills and expenses in a "Cost" column as the costs are associated with each selection.

Tracking Project Cost

Expenses and Bills appear in different areas of your Project Financials as your Cost to Date.

Financials Summary

The Cost column in the Financials Summary totals all bills and expenses broken down by Item Costs and Selections, which allows you to track your costs against your Estimated Price and Projected Price.

Bills and Expenses not associated with a budget item do not appear in the Cost to Date within the Summary. Unassociated costs can be viewed in the Bills + Expenses tab.

The Projected Price does not automatically change if your Costs to Date exceed your Estimated Price. However, you can manually override the Project Price if you choose.

Budget Line Items

Cost to Date is also broken down in the Budget tab within Financials in the Cost to Date column.

The details displayed within each item depend on the item type. Labor, Materials, or Flat Fee items display expenses with a "Cost to Date" tab that includes the vendor, date, and cost.

Permissions for Bills and Expenses

Creating and editing bills/expenses are now entirely tied to the Financials permission. From the Selections tab, given that a user has access to selection:

Users with Everything access on Financials will be able to view and edit bills/expenses on selections (matching the screenshots above)
Users with Read and Comment only access on Financials will be able to view but not edit; they will have access to open read-only modals
Users with no Financials access will get a read-only view of the line items with no access to modals

To add bills and expenses, users must have Everything access to financials.

Next up

Managing Financials

Export the Budget