Bills (Accounts Payable)

Think of it as Sales Invoicing in reverse — money going out instead of coming in. Bills is the Accounts Payable side of the business, the formal record of what you owe a supplier for goods or services received, built from your verified Receiving records so you're never stuck blindly re-entering a supplier's invoice from scratch.

Who this is for

Any business that owes suppliers on terms rather than settling in cash on the spot.
Finance/AP teams who need bills to be verifiable against what was actually received, not just what a supplier claims.
Businesses that need clear approval control before a bill becomes payable.

Bills (Accounts Payable) — the main screen

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1. CREATING A BILL — STEP BY STEP

Most Bills start life as a Receipt (Send to Bill) — carrying forward the supplier, line items, quantities, and costs that Receiving already verified, so none of it needs retyping.
A Bill can also be entered directly, for purchases that skip a formal receiving step entirely (a services invoice with no physical goods, say) — line items can be typed Inventory, Non-Inventory, or Service, so a supplier's labor or freight charge bills cleanly alongside physical stock on the same document.
Either way, the Bill is saved in a pending state first.
Approve — a separate, explicit step from saving. A bill only becomes payable once approved, following the same auto-approve-under-a-threshold-or-manual-approve pattern used across Purchase Orders and Sales — so routine, expected bills clear on their own while anything unusual still gets a human look.

Bill status pipeline

Pending Approved Paid

2. THE BILLS LIST — Tracking What You Owe

Purchase → Bills shows every bill with its balance due and status, filterable by supplier, location, and date — a real-time picture of your total payables, not a once-a-month snapshot you have to go dig up.

3. HOW IT CONNECTS TO THE REST OF THE SYSTEM

Receiving — a bill built from a receipt inherits verified quantities and pricing automatically, giving you a natural three-way match (order, receipt, bill) without any extra manual work.
Payments Made — once approved, a bill is ready to be paid; see the Payments Made guide for how payments get applied and how bulk payment across multiple bills works.
Accounting — approved bills post automatically to Accounts Payable and the relevant expense/inventory accounts in the general ledger.
Cash Flow Dashboard — outstanding bills feed directly into your Payables and Overdue widgets in real time.

4. WHY IT SCALES FROM SMB TO ENTERPRISE

Small business

Turn a receipt straight into a bill in one click — no double entry.

Growing business

Approval thresholds mean routine restocking bills skip the manager's sign-off, while large or unusual ones still get one.

Enterprise

Receipt-based billing backs the three-way-match discipline (order/receipt/bill) that audit and finance controls expect, with GL posting handled automatically on approval.

Quick Reference

Quick reference — where things live

  Bills list ............................... Purchase > Bills
  Create from a receipt .................... Open Receipt > Send to Bill
  Approve a bill ........................... Open Bill > Approve
  Related: Payments Made ................... Purchase > Payments Made