This article will help you to manage bills. Your role must include the permission to Manage Bills.
Jump to:
- Enter a bill
- Bill details
- Edit a bill
- Add a document to a bill
- Add an approver or approval group to a bill
- Delete a bill
- Restore a bill
Enter a bill
You can enter a bill from 3 places in Bill.com, 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
- 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
- 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
- If Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) 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 associate to bill to include all/none, or check Associate to bill 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 IVA
- 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.
- 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.
Quick Save
If we're confident enough in the IVA-detected details of a bill, you'll see bill details and an option to Quick Save the bill right on the document in the inbox. Select Save to save the bill as is, or select Edit to make changes and save.
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
- 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 scroll or type and search to select alternate payment terms, or select the magnifying glass and Add New Payment 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
- 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.
- To mark a line item as billable to a customer or job, switch the Billable toggle to on.
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.
Edit a bill
Add or edit details about a bill, a description of the bill, payment terms, and approvers any time before the bill being paid. Once the bill is paid in full, the vendor name and bill amount will no longer be available to edit.
- Select Bills in the navigation menu
- If a bill is not listed, it may not be an unpaid bill
- To see all bills, change Payment Status drop down to All
- Select the invoice number of the bill you want to edit
- Hover over the vendor name to see details such as payment method, payment address, pay to, payment terms, autopay setting, 1099 status, tax ID, and primary email address
- Select Edit
- Edit the bill information as needed
- Select Save
Reasons you can't edit a bill
- Once the bill has a scheduled or posted payment (partial or in full), you can no longer change the vendor name or bill amount
- You can edit the amount fields in split expenses line items to match total bill amount
- If all approvers have already approved the bill, and your approval settings do not allow edits after all approvers have approved, you can't edit
- If the bill is dated before your Books Closed Date, you can't edit the bill
Add a document to a bill
You can add a document to a bill, even if you already saved the bill.
- Select the document you'd like to use in your Inbox
- Select which pages to include by selecting All or None next to associate to bill to include all/none, or check Associate to bill per page to select individual pages
- Any pages not included will be available to use later
- Select More Actions, hover over More Actions, and select Bill
- Hover over Add to recent to quickly associate the document to one of the last 5 most recently created bills.
- Select the vendor from the drop down, and enter the invoice date range to narrow the search, or leave it blank to show all bills for this vendor
- Select Search
- Select the bill to attach the document
- Select Save
Add an approver or approval group to a bill
If you need to add an approver or approval group to a bill, you can add them when you're creating the bill by following the steps in the Enter a bill section above.
If you need to add an approver or approval group to a bill after you've saved it, you can edit the bill and add them.
- Select Bills in the navigation menu
- If a bill is not listed, it may not be an unpaid bill
- To see all bills, change Payment Status drop down to All
- Select the invoice number of the bill you want to edit
- Hover over the vendor name to see details such as payment method, payment address, pay to, payment terms, autopay setting, 1099 status, tax ID, and primary email address
- Select Edit
- 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
- Select Save
The added approvers or approval groups will get an email notification and to-do list item letting them know when it is their turn to approve.
Delete a bill
If you no longer need a bill in Bill.com, you can deactivate it, if it is completely unpaid. Bill.com does not have a void bill option. You can't delete a paid or partially bill.
Note: For audit and security purposes, when a bill is deleted in Bill.com, it is not completely deleted, but moved to inactive status. Not to worry, though! Inactive bills cannot be paid unless they are reactivated.
To deactivate a bill, you must have Manage bill/document permissions.
- Select Bills in the navigation menu
- Alternatively, select Vendors, and select the vendor's name
- Select the bill's invoice number
- Select Delete
Restore a bill
To reactivate a bill, you must have Manage bill/document permissions.
- Select Bills in the navigation menu
- Select All Bills tab
- Select Filter, select Active under Show, select Inactive, and select Apply
- Select the bill's invoice number
- Select Undelete