Where the leak actually is
Nobody decides not to rebill. What happens is that the cost is paid in week one, the invoice is raised in week six, and by then the receipt is in an email folder nobody opens. A freelancer spending €120 a month on client-attributable costs and recovering three-quarters of it loses €360 a year — not to a bad client or a bad rate, but to the gap between paying and invoicing.
The fix is structural rather than disciplinary: the expense has to be attached to the client the moment it is recorded, so that raising the invoice surfaces it instead of requiring you to remember it.
Pass-through, markup, or absorbed
| Approach | When it fits | What to say in the quote |
|---|---|---|
| Pass-through at cost | Costs you incur purely on the client's behalf: licences, hosting, travel | “Third-party costs are rebilled at cost, with receipts.” |
| Cost plus handling | Anything you have to research, procure, or carry on your own card for weeks | “Third-party costs are rebilled at cost plus 10% handling.” |
| Built into the fee | Small, predictable costs that come with every job of this type | Nothing — but price the job knowing they exist. |
| Client pays directly | Large or recurring costs: ad spend, hosting, hardware | “Ad spend is billed to your account directly.” |
The last row deserves more use than it gets. Carrying €4,000 of a client's ad spend on your credit card for 45 days is a loan you are making them, at your interest rate, with your credit limit. Put large recurring costs on their card and the problem disappears.
VAT, and the difference between a recharge and a disbursement
Most rebilled costs are recharges: you bought the thing, so it is your cost, and when you pass it on it becomes part of your supply and carries your VAT treatment. You reclaim the input VAT if you can, and you charge VAT on the whole invoice at your rate. A rebilled train fare that was zero-rated to you is not automatically zero-rated to them.
A disbursement is narrower: a cost you paid as the client's agent, in their name, which you pass on exactly, with no markup and no benefit to you — a filing fee, for instance. Disbursements sit outside the VAT calculation. The category is easy to claim and hard to qualify for, so treat almost everything as a recharge unless you have specific advice.
Attaching the cost to the client
In Flowzivo an expense carries a client and a billable flag. Marked billable, it appears when you next invoice that client, as a line you can accept, edit or defer — with the receipt still attached to it.
Once it goes onto an invoice it is marked as rebilled, so the same cost cannot be invoiced twice, and the expense report separates what you absorbed from what you recovered. That second number is the one worth watching: it tells you whether your quoting is accounting for costs you keep discovering.
Log the expense instead of reading about it
The demo is the real product with example data in it. No account, nothing to install, and anything you add you can keep when you sign up.
No account to look around. Example data, and anything you add is yours to keep.
Questions
Is a markup on expenses acceptable?
It is common, it is legal, and it should be stated in advance. Ten to fifteen per cent is the usual band and covers procurement time and the cash you float. What clients object to is discovering a markup they were not told about, not the markup itself.
Do I have to send the receipts?
Only if the quote or contract says you will, but offering them costs nothing and closes the conversation before it opens. Attach them to the invoice for anything above a threshold you set — a hundred of your currency is a sensible line.
What if the client refuses a cost afterwards?
That is a quoting problem showing up late. Agree in advance which categories are rebilled and set a figure above which you ask first. A costs clause of two sentences prevents almost all of these disputes.
Should rebilled costs count as my revenue?
They pass through your accounts as income and as a matching cost, so they inflate turnover without adding profit. Watch profit rather than turnover, or a year heavy on rebilled costs will look like growth that never reached you.