Paying Your Bills in QuickBook

Entering bills in QuickBooks isn’t the same as paying bills. The bills you enter are a record of what you owe and when, but they do nothing to send money to your vendors. Pay Bills is the command that actually pushes your money out the door. With this command, you can select the bills you want to pay, how much to pay on each one, the payment method, the payment account, and the date for the payment. If you have credits or early payment discounts, you can include those, too.

Tip: If you want to evaluate all your unpaid bills before you pay them, the Unpaid Bills Detail report displays the bills due up to the current date, grouped by vendor.

Selecting Bills to Pay

You begin the payment process by choosing the bills you want to pay. When you choose Vendors➝Pay Bills (or click the Pay Bills icon on the Home page), Quick- Books opens the Pay Bills window and shows the bills due within the next two weeks. As Figure 9-12 shows, you can change the bills that appear, view bill details, or apply credits and discounts.   Paying Your Bills

Figure 9-12:╇ In the Pay Bills window, you can easily spot early payment discounts when you select “Show all bills” in the upper left. In the Sort By box, choose Discount Date to sort by the discount date (or the due date, if the bill doesn’t have a discount date). When you click a bill in the table, QuickBooks shows available discounts and credits in the “Discount & Credit Information for Highlighted Bill” section. If you want to review a bill before you pay it, click “Go to Bill”; the Enter Bills window opens so you can review or even revise the bill.

Here are the ways you can select bills to pay in the Pay Bills window:

• Clicking the Select All Bills button below the table is the easiest way to select bills. QuickBooks selects all the bills displayed in the Pay Bills table and fills in the Amt. To Pay cells with the total due on each bill. You can choose individual bills for payment by turning on their checkboxes. (The button’s label changes to Clear Selections when at least one bill is selected.)

Note: When you select more than one bill from the same vendor, QuickBooks automatically combines those bills onto one check when you pay them.

• To use different payment methods (check and credit card, for example), make two passes through the Pay Bills window. On the first pass, choose all the bills that you pay by check and, in the Payment section, in the Method box, choose Check. During the second pass, in the Method box, choose Credit Card.

• To pay bills submitted in different currencies, you have to make a pass through the Pay Bills window for each currency. QuickBooks creates an Accounts Payable account for each currency you assign to vendors. To pay bills from vendors using a specific currency, choose the corresponding Accounts Payable account in the A/P Account drop-down list. The Pay Bills window then displays the bill amounts in the foreign currency, and the amount you have to pay in your home currency.

Modifying Payment Amounts Whether you select individual bills or QuickBooks selects them for you, the program automatically fills in the Amt. To Pay cells with the total amounts that are due. Paying bills in full means you don’t have to worry about the next due date or paying late fees, but making partial payments can stretch limited resources to appease more of your unpaid vendors. To pay only part of a bill, in a bill’s Amt. To Pay cell, type how much you want to pay. UP TO SPEED

Tip: If you keep your cash in an interest-bearing account until you need it, you’ll want to know how much money you need to transfer to your checking account to pay the bills. In the Pay Bills window, the number at the bottom of the Amt. Due column is the total amount for all the bills displayed, and the number at the bottom of the Amt. To Pay column is the total for all the bills you’ve selected to pay. Initially, the two totals are the same, but if you change a value in an Amt. To Pay cell, click another cell to update the Amt. To Pay total.