A billable expense is a cost you incur while working for a client or on a specific project, which you intend to charge back to that client on an invoice. In Zoho Expense, you can mark any expense as billable and associate it with a customer or project. When the expense is approved, it flows into Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice so you can include it on the next client invoice.
When adding an expense in Zoho Expense, employees check the “Billable” option and select the relevant customer. The system retains this tag through the approval and reimbursement process. Finance teams can then pull all billable expenses for a customer and raise an invoice directly from Zoho Books without manually re-entering the amounts.
The integration between Zoho Expense and Zoho Books means billable expenses appear automatically in the invoicing queue once approved. This eliminates double-entry and ensures no client-chargeable cost is missed. You can also add a markup percentage on billable expenses before invoicing the client.
Zoho Expense allows you to split an expense and mark only the billable portion accordingly. For example, if a meal includes both personal and client-related costs, you can split the receipt and tag only the client portion as billable.
The invoice generated in Zoho Books shows the amount you choose to charge the client, which can be the original expense amount or a marked-up figure. The original expense amount is retained internally for your records regardless of what is billed.
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