This article describes how Project purchasing works (such as purchase invoices). If you want to submit individual expenses (without related purchasing), then check the article: Submitting expenses.

You use project purchasing to record services (e.g. outsourcing of third parties) or expenses you have purchased on a project. This allows you, on the one hand, to properly monitor these costs and, if desired (depending on the set invoicing method), recharge them to the customer.

For each service within a project, you determine whether costs may be recorded on it. By setting a budget, you can manage the costs — just like the hours spent — effectively.

It is possible to record both hours and purchasing on a single service. This allows you to deliver one service and also invoice it as a single line.

For example: you charge a fixed price for designing and printing business cards. You charge:

You invoice this as a fixed price of 100 euros to the customer.

There are two ways to get purchase invoices into Simplicate:

To Manually enter a purchase invoice, go to Projects > Project purchasing. Then choose 'Add' > 'Add purchase invoice manually' to create a new purchase invoice manually.

You will now immediately see the budget, how much has already been spent, and how much budget remains.

By checking the Billable box, the service will actually be recharged in the case of time and expenses.

When you have many of the same services on a project, you can also make use of Service numbers. These numbers are then also visible when you want to book costs on them:

When the invoice needs to be distributed across multiple projects, click ‘Add purchase entry’ again to process an additional invoice line.

On the project, under the Costs tab, you will see that the budget has now been updated with the amount spent through this purchase entry.

You do not book a purchase invoice in Simplicate as with manual purchasing, but directly in your accounting system.

When you create a project in Simplicate, it is now mandatory to create a project number. This project number is used in the accounting system.

You first book the incoming invoice in the accounting system and then process it in Simplicate via Project > Project purchasing.

In Twinfield, projects are used. After you have created a project in Simplicate, it will automatically be created in Twinfield within a few minutes with the same project number.

Next, book your purchase as usual, selecting the correct general ledger account to automatically use the right cost type in Simplicate. As project, choose the project to which the costs should be booked.

Depending on your settings, the entry will be forwarded when it is a draft or final booking.

Exact works, depending on the integration settings, with cost centers or cost units. When you create a new project, Simplicate will create the cost center or cost unit in Exact Online within a few minutes, using the same number and name.

When you create a new entry in Exact Online, choose the purchased product. If the product is correctly defined in Exact Online, including the general ledger account, the cost type will automatically be forwarded to Simplicate. Then, for each entry line, choose the cost center or cost unit that corresponds with the Simplicate project you want to book it on.

All purchase entries that have been made in the accounting system are transferred to Simplicate. These can be found under: Projects > Project purchases.

The booked purchases can be retrieved by clicking the ‘Import purchase’ button at the top right.

Under the heading To process, new entries are ready. Then click Actions > Edit to further process the invoice. The detail screen with the invoice data will open.

Here you will see all (consolidated) entry lines from the accounting system. The entry is linked to the project as it was set based on the booking in Exact.

Click Actions > Edit for each line to edit the individual entry line.

Next, determine the service on which you want to record the purchase. In practice, most values will already be pre-filled based on the settings on the service and the integration settings.

In the purchase screen, once all lines have been processed, click Save and return. You will now find the purchase under the Processed tab.

We have also added an indicator on project purchasing. This allows you, as a project manager, to see how many of the imported project purchases you still need to process.

Note: This indicator does not include manually added project purchases and only applies to ‘to be processed’ purchase lines for the logged-in project manager.

When a purchase entry in the accounting system is adjusted after it has been processed in Simplicate, the adjustment will not be sent to Simplicate. You will therefore also need to correct it in Simplicate.

In addition, if an imported purchase entry is deleted in Simplicate, it will be re-imported during the next Project purchasing import. To prevent this, we recommend not linking a cost center or cost unit to the purchase entry, so that it will not be imported into Simplicate.

Exporting

It is also possible to generate an export of all project purchases. You can find this option at the top right of the project purchasing overview.