Payables

Invoicing & Payments has two tabs. Receivable is the money clients owe you. Payable is the money you owe vendors: every vendor bill, from every job and from purchase orders with no job.

Each bill belongs to a purchase order, or waits under Needs a PO until it's placed on one. Opening a bill opens its purchase order on the Bills & approvals tab, over the page, so you can review it without leaving the list. For how a bill gets onto a purchase order in the first place, see Purchase orders and requests for price.

The tiles

The page opens on what needs you: bills to authorize, and bills that need placing on a purchase order. One line above the list says how many. Show every bill lists them all.

• In review: bills waiting on you to authorize, send back or refuse.
• Over PO: bills in review that are more than their purchase order authorized. They're flagged, not refused.
• Needs a PO: bills that came in without a purchase order. Place each one on the order it belongs to.
• Authorized, not paid: authorized bills QuickBooks hasn't marked paid yet.

Everything that isn't waiting on you is under Other states: Sent back (with the vendor to fix, or waiting on a corrected bill), Refused, Paid, and Withdrawn (the vendor took it back before anyone acted on it).

Every tile counts bills by the day they came in. The Received filter narrows that, alongside the branch and vendor filters. Search finds a bill by its number, the purchase order, the vendor, the job or the amount, across every bill and not just the view you're on. Display sets the sort (newest first, by vendor, largest first) and which columns show. Export downloads the list.

The columns are the bill, the purchase order it's against, the job (or "Not tied to a project"), the vendor, what the order authorized, what was billed, what's left, and the status. A row that needs you carries its action: Review payable, Review overage or Place on a PO.

Deciding a bill

Open the bill to see its lines, tax and total beside what the purchase order authorized. A bill read by AI from an upload marks the values it filled in, and a bill that quotes a different purchase order number says so. The decision buttons sit at the foot of the purchase order and show only for people who approve expenses. Choose one:

• Authorize files the cost, closes the purchase order, and sends the bill to QuickBooks. If you approve expenses you can do it yourself, or send it to someone else who approves expenses. They're notified and get a task to authorize it, send it back or refuse it. From then on only they can authorize it.
• Send back to fix returns a bill the vendor sent from their portal, with what needs fixing. They amend the same bill and send it again. Nothing is filed until you accept it.
• Ask for a corrected bill replaces Send back when your team uploaded the bill or it came in by email. The vendor is emailed (if they have an email on file), and the bill waits as "Waiting on a corrected bill" until you press Upload a corrected bill on the purchase order. You can also Edit a bill your team uploaded.
• Refuse it turns the bill down. It needs a reason, which the vendor reads as you wrote it. Nothing is owed on it, nothing is filed, and the purchase order stays open for a new bill.

Where the cost is filed depends on the purchase order:

• On a job: against the job. The committed cost the order booked becomes what was actually billed.
• No job, stock material: on the branch's stock. If the bill's price differs from what was delivered, the stock is re-priced to the billed price, along with any job that already used it. A cost someone typed on a work order stays as typed. See Stock and inventory.
• No job, anything else: as an office expense under the order's category.

Over PO

A bill for more than its purchase order is flagged Over PO, and the people who authorize bills are told. It isn't refused. Its purchase order shows what was authorized, what was billed and the difference side by side.

Authorizing an over-PO bill accepts the overage. The purchase order is amended to what you accepted, the original amount stays on the record, and the amendment doesn't go back through approval. If you don't accept the overage, send the bill back or refuse it with your reason.

A T&M placeholder works the same way: the bill carries the real cost, and authorizing it records that cost against the placeholder.

Needs a PO

A bill that isn't tied to a purchase order yet sits under Needs a PO. Press Place on a PO and pick the order it belongs to from that vendor's open purchase orders waiting on a bill. If the bill quotes a purchase order number, or its amount matches one, that order is suggested for you. Check it before you save. Once it's on the order, authorize it from there.

QuickBooks

Authorizing sends the bill to QuickBooks as one bill against the vendor, with one line per category account.

The vendor has to be matched to a QuickBooks vendor first. If they aren't, Authorize stops before anything happens and says so. To match one, click the company on Subtrades and suppliers and pick its QuickBooks vendor in the QuickBooks section of the sheet that opens. To match many at once, use Settings → Integrations → QuickBooks → Match vendors. Then authorize again. A push never creates a vendor in QuickBooks or guesses at one.

Each row shows where the bill stands: In QuickBooks, Sending to QuickBooks, or Not in QuickBooks. If QuickBooks turns a bill down, the authorization still stands, and the bill also shows on the Expenses page under Not in QuickBooks with every other sync problem.

Pay vendors in QuickBooks as you do now. Once QuickBooks marks a bill paid, it turns Paid here on the next check, which runs hourly.