Every business buys things, and most of what it buys arrives as a PDF in somebody’s inbox. The rent, the software, the wholesaler, the plumber you called on a Saturday.
Enter a bill here and it’s in the books as it lands: what you owe, the tax on it, and the stock that came in with it. Pay it later and the balance clears itself.
What you can do
- Enter a supplier’s bill, keeping their invoice number next to your own.
- Attach the supplier’s PDF to the bill, so the paper is one click from the entry.
- Raise a purchase order before you buy, and see what’s on order without anything moving yet.
- Set up recurring bills - rent, insurance, subscriptions - that enter themselves on schedule.
- Record a supplier credit note from the bill it corrects, when something came back or was overcharged.
- Import a supplier’s e-invoice straight into a bill instead of typing it.
- Pay bills one by one or several at once, by bank transfer, check or ACH file.
- Report on what you’ve bought, and from whom, from the same bills.
How it works in practice
Enter the bill (Procurement → Purchases → Purchase Invoices). Pick the supplier and add the lines: products from your catalog, or just a description and an amount for things you don’t stock. Put the supplier’s own invoice number on it. Yours comes from your purchase numbering, so you can find it either way. Attach their PDF to it.
Finalize, and the books are done. The cost goes to the ledger accounts on each line, the tax goes to your tax accounts, and the total goes onto what you owe that supplier. If a line is a stock product, the stock goes up too. Nothing to post by hand.
Order first when it matters (Procurement → Purchases → Purchase Orders). A purchase order tells the supplier what you want and at what price, and it’s a commitment rather than a movement: raising one moves no stock. If you want goods booked in when the pallet arrives rather than when the bill does, the Procure-to-Pay extension adds goods receipts and checks each bill against the order - see goods receipts.
Let the regular ones enter themselves (Procurement → Purchases → Recurring purchases). A recurring bill is a template plus a schedule: weekly, every two or four weeks, monthly, every two months, quarterly, twice a year or yearly. It raises the real bill on each date until the end date, if you set one, so the rent is in the books on the first without anybody typing it.
Correct a bill from the bill. Open a finalized bill and choose Record supplier credit note. That’s the document the supplier sends when goods went back or they overcharged you. It reduces what you owe, and the tax with it, and the original bill stays exactly as it was.
Skip the typing when the supplier sends an e-invoice. A supplier’s structured e-invoice file - the Peppol or UBL kind in Europe, the GST e-invoice in India - imports as a bill instead of being typed.
Then pay (Procurement → Payments). Register what you paid against one bill or spread one payment across several, print a check, or put a run of payments into an ACH file for your bank. Payments and getting paid covers all three.
Good to know
- A bill that’s also on your bank statement can start from the bank line. If the money went out before anybody entered the bill, raise it from the statement line and it settles that line when you finalize it. See accounting and bookkeeping.
- Recurring bills scheduled on the 29th, 30th or 31st can skip a short month. Start a monthly one on the 28th or earlier and it runs every month.
- With Procure-to-Pay switched on, the bill stops moving stock. The goods receipt has already done it, so the bill only records what you owe.
- If a supplier undercharged you, their correction is simply another bill. There’s no separate supplier debit note: enter the extra amount as a bill, the same as the supplier sent it.
- US businesses: 1099s start on the supplier. Record each contractor’s W-9 on their supplier record as it arrives, and the year’s 1099 figures come from the bills you paid. See reports and dashboards.