Recording bills
Enter Bills
is on the Activities menu (or the
Purchases and Vendors
tab of the Navigator) and XE "enter bills" XE "bills:recording" gets you to the
Enter Bills
window (shown below.) Tab
down to the vendor name, drop the list, and select a vendor. The vendor name can be selected if it is already on the list. If not, just type it in. You will get the choice of
Quick Add or Set Up,
and you can do either.
Maybe
Enter Bills
stays as is. If you use purchase orders, and if any are open on this vendor, you will see ...
OK, so you plan to use PO’s, but have not started yet. It may be useful to enter a dummy bill now, to follow
along with the discussion. You could delete it later.
On the other hand, you might have open PO’s on this vendor, and you would click “Yes,” bringing up the next
dialog box, with a list of open purchase orders.
Purchase orders
can be selected, for whatever is actually received. Then clicking
OK brings you back to Enter Bills.
Bill or
Credit
“option buttons” give the opportunity to select
Credit,
which is handled below, under “When
the vendor pays you.” For now, you should be beyond this.
Bill Received
check box indicates the bill has been received. If it is cleared, the bill will have the bold
notation, Item Receipt Only,
and have no due date. In order to record receipt of goods or services, the
debt must also be recorded. However, if the vendor has yet to bill you, there is no due date.
Class
field is conspicuous by its absence from the upper part of the form. The individual line items within the
bill may have classes, but the bill itself has no class.
Date
should always be inspected, and will be the date the expense is recorded, for accrual basis reports.
Bill Due
is a fixed offset later than the date XE "due date:of bill" XE "bill:date due" of the bill, and may be
edited here. The days of offset may be changed in
File|Preferences|Purchases & Vendors
or by Preferences|Transactions,
which (for QuickBooks 5) is illustrated below, in
Purchase Orders.
Ref No.
will appear on the check skirt when the bill is paid, and is all that can be printed with the check. This
is a text field of eleven characters. This may be checked for duplication, using the same preference as above.
In a large file, checking takes time, and may slow recording of bills.
Amount Due (or
Credit Amount
) always takes a positive number.
Terms
may be selected from the list, and may be the basis of a suggested discount when the bill is paid. The
usual terms for any vendor may be set up by editing the vendor from the vendor list.
In the list or any display of terms, the visible text is cosmetic. The numbers behind the text control what
happens. The list of terms may be edited under
Lists|Other Lists|Terms.
QuickBooks 5 allows fractional
percentage discounts. The usual terms for any vendor may be set up by editing the vendor from the vendor list
. Discounts may be adjusted when the bill is paid.
Memo
accepts information which shows on the payables register, and in some reports. This memo applies to
the bill, as a transaction in Accounts Payable.
The Great Divide:
all of the information above applies to the Accounts Payable side of the transaction.
Information below applies to the expense, the item, or the asset purchased.
|