Bills and paying suppliers
You’ll need: Bills, Transactions, Cash accounts — if you cannot see these, the module may be switched off for your business or outside your permissions. An administrator can change either.
A bill is what a supplier says you owe. It is their document, recorded by you — which is the opposite of an invoice, and worth holding on to.
What it holds
A bill number (yours) and a supplier invoice number (theirs). The supplier, the purchase order it relates to, the business location, the currency, the bill date and the due date. Lines and notes.
There is also a collection run link, for the buying pattern covered in the next lesson.
Record their number
The supplier invoice number is the reference they will quote in every chase, every statement and every phone call. Recording it is the difference between resolving a query in a minute and asking them to send the document again.
Match before you pay
The bill is the third leg of the three-way match. Before it is approved, the question is not “is this bill plausible” but:
- do the quantities match what the goods receipt recorded?
- do the prices match what the purchase order agreed?
A bill for 100 when 94 were received is a bill to query, not to pay. A bill at a higher unit price than the order is a conversation, not an adjustment to absorb.
This only works if the receipt was recorded honestly, which is why the previous lesson is the one that matters.
Due dates and paying on time
The due date is what makes your obligations visible. Terms written in a note are prose; a date is data, and it is what lets you see everything falling due next week without opening each bill.
Paying suppliers late by accident is expensive in a way that does not show up in any report: it costs you the terms, the priority and the goodwill that produced them.
Standalone bills move stock
A bill with a purchase order behind it does not move stock — the receipt already did. A standalone bill does, because nothing else has.
That is the mechanism for the smaller purchase where a full order-and-receipt cycle is not worth it. Buying a box of parts from the market, recording the bill, and having the stock appear is legitimate. Just know that when you do it, you have skipped the three-way match, and the bill is now the only record of what arrived.
Paying
Payment is recorded as a transaction against the bill, from a named cash account — the same discipline as customer payments. Part payments are recorded as what they are; the balance is what remains.
Try it
On staging.feeprime.com, enter a bill against a purchase order where you received less than ordered, and compare the three documents. Then enter a standalone bill and watch it move stock by itself.