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Supplier bills

Record what your suppliers bill you, let AI read the bill for you, approve it for payment, record what you paid, and link it to a project's expense.

A supplier's bill is what you owe for goods or work you bought. You record it in Accounts payable, under Finance, someone approves it for payment, and you record what you paid. A bill states a cost, not a price, so everyone who can open Finance sees bills.

Before you start

  • The supplier must be one of your Suppliers. Add it there first if it is new.
  • Approving a bill needs the permission "Approve the bills of suppliers": the owner, admins and the Approver role have it. Who records a bill is often not who releases it.

Record a bill

  1. In Accounts payable, choose New bill.
  2. Drop the supplier's bill, a PDF, into the drawer and choose Read with AI. What the bill prints fills the form: the supplier, its invoice number, the dates, the currency and the lines. Each field it filled says Read from the bill. Check it.
  3. Check the fields and the lines read from the bill. Correct a line by hand, remove it, or tell AI what to change in a sentence.
  4. Pick the Project if the bill is for one.
  5. Choose Add bill.

The bill gets its own number at once, and the supplier's paper is kept as a file of the bill. You can also fill the form yourself without a paper, and add the lines on the bill's page.

The drawer New bill: the place for the supplier's bill, which AI can read, then the supplier, the project, the bill's numbers, subject and dates.
  1. The supplier's bill, for AI to read. Nothing is saved until you choose Add bill.
  2. The supplier, picked among yours. A supplier the bill names that you do not have is shown by name, for you to pick or add.
  3. The project the bill is for, if any.
  4. The number the supplier gave its bill. Each number of a supplier is recorded once.
  5. The due date. Without one the drawer proposes 30 days after the bill's date.
  6. Add bill records it.

AI never guesses. What the bill does not print stays empty, and a total that differs from the lines by less than one unit is proposed as an adjustment. A bigger difference is a warning for you to look at.

Accounts payable: what is to pay, overdue and awaiting approval, the views by status, Import and New bill, and the bills with their supplier, project and status.
  1. What is to pay, what is overdue and what is awaiting approval.
  2. The views by status: Draft, Rejected, To pay, Overdue, Paid and Cancelled.
  3. Import adds bills from Excel, as drafts.
  4. New bill.
  5. The supplier's own invoice number, beside yours.

Approve or reject it

A new bill is a draft, waiting for approval. It is listed in Workflow for the people who may approve it.

A supplier's bill waiting for approval: Record as expense, Reject and Approve, its lines, the expenses that name it, its totals and its details.
  1. Its status: a draft, waiting for approval.
  2. Record as expense records the bill as an expense of its project.
  3. Reject sends it back, with the reason, which is required.
  4. Approve says the bill is right and may be paid. It needs a due date and a line.
  5. The expenses of the project that this bill pays.
  6. Its supplier, project, entity, numbers, dates and currency.

A rejected bill keeps its reason. Changing it sends it back to wait for approval again. An approved bill cannot change: More, Back to draft opens it again while nothing is paid on it, and Cancel bill cancels it.

Pay it

  1. On an approved bill, choose Record payment.
  2. Type the amount, the day and how you paid, and choose Record payment.

The status follows by itself: Approved, then Partially paid, then Paid. Past its due date, an unpaid bill shows Overdue.

A bill and a project's cost

A bill is how an expense is owed and paid. It is not a cost of the project by itself: the project's expense is. Otherwise the same diesel would cost the project twice.

  • Record as expense, on a bill with a project, opens the project's expense with the bill's subject, supplier, date and amount filled in. It waits for approval there, like any expense.
  • An expense can also name its bill in its own form.
  • A project's Cost overview shows its approved bills beside the actual cost, never inside it, and how many are not recorded as an expense yet.

Good to know

  • A draft bill can be deleted. An approved one is cancelled instead, by someone who may approve bills, while nothing is paid on it.
  • When an expert you work with invoices their approved time, their invoice arrives here as a draft bill, with its PDF.
  • A bill keeps its own currency, which need not be the project's.