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Supply-house tickets that never made the invoice: a weekly check in Jobber, Housecall Pro or QuickBooks

Five steps for Friday, what each tool’s help pages say it does with a supplier ticket, and the Florida Department of Revenue’s rule on sales tax for contractors.

Lumora, Gainesville. . 7 min read

On this page 10 sections

General information, not legal advice.

One tank on one ticket

Dunlin Plumbing is our sample 2-truck plumbing shop. Its names and numbers are samples, not a real shop’s. On September 22, Dave picked up two parts at Oak Street Supply Co. for job 4470, a water heater swap.

Ticket 87106 lists a 40-gallon electric water heater at $612.00 and a 2-gallon expansion tank at $38.90. The job number is on the PO line, as 4470-DB. With 7.5% sales tax, $48.82, the ticket comes to $699.72.

Invoice 4470 has five lines and comes to $1,450.00. The heater is on it. The tank is not, and Dunlin’s price book charges $165.00 for an expansion tank, installed.

The ticket cannot say where the tank went. It may be on the heater, unbilled. It may have gone back to the counter, or it may still be on Dave’s truck. Only Dave knows, so every line the check turns up goes to a person before anything is added to an invoice.

Count the price you would have charged, not what the part cost you. The $38.90 is what Dunlin paid. If the tank went on the heater, $165.00 is the money that never came in.

The Friday check

We pick Friday because the week’s tickets are in and the techs still remember the week’s jobs.

  1. Step 1 of 5

    Gather the week’s tickets from every supply house: the emailed copies, the paper ones from each truck and, if your supply house shows your account online, its list of the week’s tickets, so a lost paper ticket still turns up.

  2. Step 2 of 5

    Put a job number on every ticket. Most carry it on the PO line, as ticket 87106 does. A ticket with no job number goes to the tech whose name is on it, first thing.

  3. Step 3 of 5

    Open the invoice for that job, draft or sent, and tick off each ticket line against an invoice line. A flat price that already covers the part counts as billed.

  4. Step 4 of 5

    For each line left over, ask the tech where the part went: into the job, back to the counter or onto the truck. Then decide: add it to the invoice, bill it separately, return it for credit or write it off on purpose.

  5. Step 5 of 5

    Log every ticket on one sheet: supplier, ticket number, job number, invoice number, every line billed yes or no, and what you decided.

Small parts such as fittings and glue often go on an invoice as one materials line, or into a flat price.

Tick those off against that line or that price, and spend your time on the parts your price book prices one by one, like the tank. After a month, the log shows whether the misses come from one truck or one supply house.

In Jobber

We read the help pages of all three tools on October 16, 2026. The quoted words are theirs. Settings change, so check yours against the pages in the sources.

On the Plus plan, or any plan with the Bookkeeping add-on, you can upload supplier invoices to Expenses or forward them by email. Jobber “scans the whole document for a job number”: in the PO number, the reference or order number, and the notes and description lines.

When the number matches a job, it attaches the expense to that job. When nothing matches, it still makes a draft and you pick the job. You approve every draft before it is saved.

Jobber’s advice is to “put the job number on the purchase order you send your supplier.” Dunlin’s techs write the job number and their initials, 4470-DB. Jobber’s page does not say whether a number with letters after it still matches, so send one ticket through and see.

An approved ticket becomes an expense in the job’s Costs section, which feeds job costing on the Grow and Plus plans. Jobber says “Job costs are internal, so your clients won’t see your profits or costs.”

Neither page says the expense reaches the client’s invoice, so step 3 still applies. One more detail: the draft’s total is “the subtotal from the invoice, not including tax.”

In Housecall Pro

Housecall Pro’s job costing guide gives two ways to record a part on a job. A material line item, with its unit cost filled in, is priced on the job like any other line.

A material job input “will not show up on the invoice or impact the price of the job.” Housecall Pro suggests inputs for flat-rate pricing. The switches for job costing and for job inputs sit under Settings, Jobs, on the Costs & Materials tab.

So look at how your techs enter parts. On a flat-rate job an input is right, because the flat price already covers the part. On a job billed line by line, a part entered only as an input is tracked as a cost and never reaches the invoice.

The guide covers parts your team enters and says nothing about reading a supplier’s ticket, so the tickets still come in by hand for the Friday check.

In QuickBooks Online

On QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced, a supplier bill can be billed to a customer. Turn on “Make expenses and items billable” under Settings, Account and settings, Expenses, in the Bills and expenses section.

When you enter the supply-house bill, tick Billable on the line and pick the customer in the Customer column. The next time you start an invoice for that customer, QuickBooks “opens the Add to invoice window”, and you select Add on the charge.

Of the three tools, that window is the nearest thing to a reminder we found, and it works only if the bill was marked billable to the right customer when it was entered. The billable line also has a Tax checkbox. The next section has what Florida says about tax on these parts.

If your invoices start in Jobber or Housecall Pro and sync over, add a missing part there, where the invoice starts. Supplier bills are on neither tool’s sync list, as our article on what Jobber and Housecall Pro send to QuickBooks found.

What Florida’s sales tax rule means for a lost part

The Florida Department of Revenue’s guide “Sales and Use Tax on Construction, Improvements, Installations and Repairs” (GT-800067) says that under “lump sum, cost plus, fixed fee, guaranteed price, or time-and-materials real property contracts, the contractor is the final consumer of materials and supplies” and:

  • “Must pay sales tax to suppliers on all purchases, including those made for the contractor’s own use.”
  • “Should not charge tax to the customer.”

That is why ticket 87106 carries $48.82 of sales tax and invoice 4470 carries none. The 7.5% is Florida’s 6% rate plus Alachua County’s 1.5% surtax.

  • 7.5%sales tax on a supply-house ticket in Alachua County: Florida’s 6% plus the county’s 1.5% surtax

    Source: Florida Statutes, section 212.05 (2026), the 6 percent state rate, and Florida Department of Revenue, Form DR-15DSS, Discretionary Sales Surtax Information for Calendar Year 2025. Government data.

In Technical Assistance Advisement 25A-012, dated November 17, 2025, the Department applied the lump-sum rule to one business that bought shutters from a wholesaler who also installed them for its customers.

It wrote that the contractor “should not charge tax to the customer, regardless of whether or not they itemize charges for materials or labor.” The advisement covers that business’s facts. In its own words, it is “binding on the Department only under the facts and circumstances described in the request for this advice”.

The guide treats two other kinds of work differently. Under a “retail sale plus installation” contract, the contractor “lists and prices in the contract all materials to be used before the work begins”, buys them tax-exempt for resale and charges the customer tax on them.

Installing an item that stays tangible personal property, such as a window air-conditioning unit, is taxed on the full price.

Our reading, for the lump-sum and time-and-materials jobs: the tax paid at the counter is part of what the part cost you, and the only place it comes back is the price on your invoice. Dunlin paid $2.92 of tax on the $38.90 tank, $41.82 in all, and billed nothing for it.

What to count in your shop

Ticket lines never billed × the price you would have charged = what the week’s tickets left off your invoices

Count the lines your Friday check turns up for four weeks, and only the parts that went into a job. A part returned to the counter or still on the truck is not money lost. For job 4470, with sample numbers: 1 tank × $165.00 = $165.00.

Our loss calculator leaves supply-house tickets out. It counts finished jobs that were never billed at all, so a part missing from a job that was billed belongs in this count instead.

Our plumbing page puts job 4470’s ticket beside its invoice, and our electrical page counts tickets like it on a sample shop’s walk sheet.

Where to start

This Friday, pull the week’s tickets from every supply house and run the five steps. If you use Jobber, send one ticket through supplier invoice scanning to see whether your PO format matches.

If you would rather have it found for you, a paid walk can go through your supply-house tickets against your invoices; here is how a walk works. Most fixes go inside the tools you already use.

Sources, in plain words

Questions and answers

How do I catch materials that never got billed?

Once a week, put each supply-house ticket next to the invoice for its job and tick off every line. Ask the tech about any line left over: into the job, back to the counter or onto the truck. Then add it to the invoice, bill it separately, return it for credit or write it off on purpose, and log the ticket.

Does Jobber match supplier invoices to jobs?

On the Plus plan, or any plan with the Bookkeeping add-on, yes. Jobber scans an uploaded or forwarded supplier invoice for a job number in the PO number, the reference or order number and the notes, and attaches the expense to that job; you approve each draft. The expense is a job cost, which Jobber calls internal. Its pages do not say the expense reaches the client’s invoice. As of October 16, 2026.

Can QuickBooks Online add a supplier bill to a customer’s invoice?

On Plus and Advanced, yes. Turn on “Make expenses and items billable”, tick Billable on the bill’s line and pick the customer. The next invoice you start for that customer opens the Add to invoice window, where you select Add. QuickBooks’ help page lists only Plus and Advanced for it.

Do Florida contractors charge sales tax on materials?

Under lump sum, cost plus, fixed fee, guaranteed price and time-and-materials real property contracts, the Florida Department of Revenue’s guide GT-800067 says the contractor “Must pay sales tax to suppliers on all purchases” and “Should not charge tax to the customer.” A retail sale plus installation contract, with every material listed and priced in the contract before the work begins, works the other way: the contractor buys the materials tax-exempt for resale and charges the customer tax on them.

Does a Housecall Pro material job input show on the invoice?

No. Housecall Pro says material job inputs “will not show up on the invoice or impact the price of the job,” and suggests them for flat-rate pricing. A material line item with its unit cost filled in is priced on the job like any other line.

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