Here's how we've been going about it:

We enter the Bill as if we were paying the Vendor directly. This includes setting up the Vendor, and selecting items on a Bill (or Purchase Order and Item Receipt if you'd like to use them).

When Paying the Bill, instead of paying by Check of Online Payment, we pay by Credit Card. We have created Employee Reimbursement Accounts for each Employee with an expense allowance, these are Credit Card accounts in QB.

By paying the bill via the Credit Card (Employee Reimbursement Account), we can track what vendors our team is using, track items (including coding and billing them to jobs), and then pay back the employee in an amount equal to the balance of their Credit Card/Employee Reimbursement account at regular intervals (connected to payroll, usually).