Creating a Disbursement from a Supplier Invoice

In this article:

• Creating a Disbursement from a Supplier Invoice
• Understanding How This Works
• Understanding Tax on Hard Disbursements 

In Actionstep, you can bill an expense from a supplier invoice straight onto a client matter.

Creating a Disbursement from a Supplier Invoice

1. In Actionstep, click the global Create button and choose Purchase from the Accounting section.
2. On Step1, choose Purchase Template or Supplier Invoice and click Next. 
3. On Step 2, fill in Our Reference, Supplier Invoice #, and Supplier Invoice Date and then click Next.
4. On Step 3, enter the Supplier Name. 
5. Click the Related Matter drop-down list and choose the matter where you want the disbursement to be billed. 
6. Choose a Shipping Address and click Finish. The Draft Supplier Invoice page appears.
7. Enter the required supplier invoice details on the Supplier Invoice Items tab. 
8. For the expense you want to bill as a disbursement, select the Bill checkbox. 
9. Complete any other information that is needed. 
10. Click Save to save your changes and add the disbursement to the matter. 

To view the disbursement in the matter:

1. In Actionstep, view the matter. (See Editing a Matter for help.)
2. Click the Billing menu icon. The Billing page appears.
3. Click the Disbursements link on the left side of the page. A list of disbursements is displayed.
4. Click the link for the disbursement you just created in the previous section. The Edit Disbursement window appears:
   

Understanding How This Works

If the expense account you use on your supplier invoice has a corresponding income account in the chart of accounts, the disbursement billed to the matter will automatically use the corresponding income account.

In the example screenshot above, the expense account for Disbursements has a corresponding income account for disbursements in the chart of accounts. Remember, when entering an expense, it costs the firm something so it will show as an expense in the accounts. However, when you bill this to our client, it will be shown as income. Since the client will pay the amount to the firm, it will show as income in your accounts.

To explain further, the account details are set up like this: (You can access this by going Accounting > Accounts > Account List.) 

Then, in the example below, the expense account 6-3005 is used: 

This means the disbursement will be automatically allocated to the corresponding income account as shown in Account 4-1200  in the Accounts List: 

Understanding Tax on Hard Disbursements 

When a disbursement is added to a matter from a supplier invoice, Actionstep first checks the Accounts List to see if there is a disbursement tax code against it. In the following example, the expense GL code 6-3005 is used, which has a disbursements tax of N-T (No Tax) so no matter what is entered in the supplier invoice, the disbursement will use this tax code. 

However, if the disbursements tax code is set to Use system default, this means that the tax applied to the disbursement will be inherited from the Tax settings defined in the matter's Matter billing options. 

In short, the disbursement will never inherit the tax that is applied when the supplier invoice is generated. It will be inherited from the options set against the account code in the accounts list and if set to default, it will inherit the settings applied in matter billing options. If the latter, then the tax will change if the matter billing tax options are changed. 

Related Articles:

• Entering Disbursements
• Creating a Supplier Invoice/Vendor Invoice