How do I enter a bill?

Mar 6, 2024

This article will help you to manage bills. Your role must include the permission to Manage Bills.

Enter a bill

You can enter a bill from 3 places in BILL, choose which one works best for your workflow:

Enter a bill from the navigation menu

Select Bills in the navigation menu
Select Enter bill on either the Unpaid Bills tab or All Bills tab
Enter bill details
Attach a document (optional)
- Select to upload or drag the document into the document window
- Select Open to attach document
- Select Save and close if you have no more bills to enter, or Save and next to enter the next bill

Enter a bill from an individual vendor record

Select Vendors in the navigation menu
Select the vendor's name
Select Create bill on the Bills tab
Enter bill details
Attach a document (optional)
- Select to upload or drag the document into the document window
- Select Open to attach document
When you've finished entering all the bill details, you have a few choices to finish:
- Select Save and close if you have no more bills to enter
- Select Save and next to enter the next bill
- If the bill doesn't require approval, select Pay to save the bill and immediately schedule payment
- If the bill doesn't require approval, select the caret/arrow next to Pay to either mark as paid with an offline payment, or print a check in your accounting software
  - Note: payment options above will be available based on your user permissions, approval settings, and accounting software. Approval policies still apply, so you will not be able to pay a bill that isn't approved based on any existing policies.

Enter a bill from a document in your Inbox

Select the document you'd like to use in your Inbox
- Tip: If Artificial Intelligence (AI) detects the vendor name on the document is a new vendor, we'll prompt you to create the vendor before saving the bill. Select Add This Vendor in the inbox above the document to quickly add the vendor with the details from the document, then you can save the bill.
- If Artificial Intelligence (AI) detected the details of a bill on the document, select Review and save
Select which pages to include by selecting All or None next to Attach page, or select the checkbox for Attach page per page to select individual pages
- Any pages not included will stay in your inbox to be used later
Select Enter bill, if the bill was not already detected by AI
Enter bill details
When you've finished entering all the bill details, you have a few choices to finish:
- Select Save and close if you have no more bills to enter
- Select Save and next to enter the next bill
- If the bill doesn't require approval, select Pay to save the bill and immediately schedule payment
- If the bill doesn't require approval, select the caret/arrow next to Pay to either mark as paid with an offline payment, or print a check in your accounting software
  - Note: payment options above will be available based on your user permissions, approval settings, and accounting software. Approval
    policies still apply, so you will not be able to pay a bill that isn't approved based on any existing policies.

Bill details

Vendor Name: The company or person you will pay
- Select Last 5 Bills to see recent bills for the vendor
Invoice Number: Any numbers or letters to help the vendor identify the bill
- If you enter a duplicate invoice number for the same vendor, you'll get a warning letting you know before you save the bill
Purchase Order Number: If your account has Purchase Orders enabled, you will see this field to enter your purchase order number
Payment term: How soon the vendor expects payment
- Will default to the vendor's payment terms if you set them, but you can select from the dropdown menu to change it, and select Apply as default for vendor if you want to set the new term as default. You can also select + New Payment Term to add a new term.
Invoice Date: The day the vendor created the invoice
Due Date: specific date the vendor expects payment
- Filled automatically if you select Payment Terms
Amount: The total amount of the bill
- You can either manually enter the bill total, or leave this blank if you will be splitting the bill into line items, and the system will calculate the total for you
- Negative line items are allowed as long as the balance due is greater than or equal to $0
- If the total of the bill is less than $0, enter a vendor credit instead.
- The maximum amount of a bill cannot be greater than $99,999,999.99.
Exchange Rate: If your vendor's currency is not USD, you will see an exchange rate field, which we pre-populate with the estimated exchange rate for the day. You can edit the rate if you'd like, but the rate on the day you pay it will be based on current exchange rates and cannot be changed
Bill Description: Statement that explains what the bill is for (for your internal purposes only, your vendor will not see it)
Check Use this for expense description to copy the Bill description to this expense description.

Expenses

Account: details about the expense or other type of account applicable to the purchase or service received
- If the account does not already exist, select Add new account
Description: Optional field to enter a description that differs from the Bill Description

To use the following categories, you will need to enable them in your settings.

Select Settings
Select Preferences under Accounting
Select the Edit icon
Select Yes for classifications you'd like to use
- Department: The Department related to the bill, generally for billable line items
- Location: The Location related to the bill, generally for billable line items
- Customer: The customer related to the bill, generally for billable line items
- Billable: Toggles the billable status of the bill
  - See the article on the bottom of this page for more information on billable items

Items

To use Items on Bills, you will need enable this setting:

Select Settings
Select Preferences under Accounting
Select Edit
Select Yes for Use Items in Payables

Adding items to Bills:

Select Items next to Expenses to view the items entry grid
Enter items and details
- To mark a line item as billable to a customer or job, switch the Billable toggle to on.
  - See the article under Resources on the bottom of this page for more information on billable items
- If the item does not already exist, select Add new item
- Use basic math operators (+, -, *, /) when entering numbers in amount or quantity fields. The system will do the math automatically.

Approvers

Approvers - the users who need to approve the bill for payment

In the Approvers section, select in an approver field, and all available approver or approval group names will popup
Select the approver or approval group, and repeat for each approver or approval group
Select the dots next to each approver or approval group and drag to reorder

Notes

Any notes you add here are visible in the Notes section on the Bill details page and all users who have create/ edit bill permissions can see them. Select "@" followed by a username to tag a user in the note, and we will notify them via email

Check Show to vendor to make a note visible to the vendor themselves.

Sync Preference

For accounts syncing with QuickBooks Online, Oracle Netsuite or Sage Intacct, there's an optional sync preference to allow the bill to sync from BILL to your accounting system. This box is checked by default. If you don't want this bill to sync to your accounting system, uncheck the box.

Draft bills

Draft bills is a temporary state for bills. You can create draft bills with incomplete information, and they won't enter the next stage of your AP workflow, meaning draft bills will not trigger the following until you convert it into a bill:

Approvals
Payments
Sync to accounting software
Notify users tagged on notes
Sync over the network to

Draft Bills offers flexibility where you may not have all the information needed to create a bill, or you want to control when to move the bill to the next step of your workflow. See more on the draft bills article.