Update the expense account of a product or service on past bills

When you edit the expense account of a product or service that’s already added to bills, the change will not apply to existing bills automatically.

Follow the steps in this article to first find all affected bills, then update them.

Find bills with products associated with the old expense account

As an example, let’s assume you had a product Phone bill that was previously associated with the expense account Purchases. You edited the service to change the expense account to a new account you created, Overhead expenses. You now need to ensure the expenses from all your existing bills with the product Phone bill added to them are tracked properly under Overhead expenses.

The first step is to find all existing bills that have the product Phone bill under the expense account Purchases. To do this:

1. Log in to your account at waveapps.com.
2. On the left navigation menu, click Reports.
3. Scroll down and click Account Transactions (General Ledger).
4. On the report, click the Account field dropdown and select the old expense account that was associated with the product or service you updated. In the example above, you would select Purchases.
5. Set the correct date range to ensure you get a list of all the bills that have products or services associated with the old expense account.
6. Ensure the report type is set Accrual to also include any unpaid bills.

The report will show all transactions associated with the old expense account, including bills. You can identify bills from the list as their description appears as Name of the vendor - Bill - product name. For example, if a bill was for the product Phone bill, bought from your vendor Laura, the description on the report for the bill would show Laura - Bill - Phone bill.

Update the expense account on existing bills

1. From the account transactions report, click on each bill that’s under the old expense account. The bills open in a new tab.
2. Click the Expense Category dropdown next to the item you updated the expense account of, then select the new account. In the example above, you would select Overhead expenses.
3. Repeat this for each line item that you updated the expense account of.
4. Click Save.
5. Navigate back to the tab with the account transactions report, then repeat the steps above for all bills.

To confirm the expense is being tracked correctly, navigate to your account transactions report, and filter it by the new expense account.

Learn how to track sales and purchases for a product or service.