Paying bills

If you have recorded a purchase, you pay the supplier in the Pay Bills window. In this window you can record the payments to one or more of your outstanding bills.

You can also make payments to suppliers in the Bank Register window. Paying bills through the Bank Register window can save you time if you have several purchases to pay and do not need to record detailed information (such as discounts and finance charges) for each payment. When you use the Bank Register window for making supplier payments, the entire payment is automatically allocated to the oldest purchase first. See ‘Entering transactions in the Bank Register window’.

You can pay several outstanding bills at once in the To Do List window.

If you pay your suppliers electronically—that is, by sending an electronic payment file (ABA file) to your bank for processing—you need to complete the electronic payment setup tasks. For more information, see ‘Set up electronic payments’.

The options for recording payments are summarised in the following diagram.

To pay bills

1	Go to the Purchases command centre and click Pay Bills. The Pay Bills window appears.

2	Select how the payment is to be made.

▪	If you are paying the supplier electronically—that is, if you will be generating an electronic payment file (ABA file) for this payment—click Group with Electronic Payments.

▪	If you are paying the supplier by some other means—such as by cash, cheque, credit card or Internet banking—type or select the account you are paying from in the Pay from Account field.

3	In the Supplier field, type or select the supplier’s name.

note : If you receive an alert message

If you have an outstanding debit with this supplier, a message may appear. You will have the opportunity to settle the debit now, or at a later date. (See Settling supplier debits).

4	Change the memo and payment date if necessary.

5	In the scrolling list in the bottom half of the window, indicate which purchases are covered by the payment by entering amounts in the Amount Applied column.



A	Pay All	If you are settling your account in full, click Pay All. The total payment amount appears in the Amount field and the individual payment amounts are applied to each open purchase.
B	Discount	If you are taking an early-payment discount for a purchase, assign the discount to the appropriate purchase in this column. Note that you cannot assign a discount to a purchase that you are not settling in full. If this is the case and you want to record a discount that the supplier has given you, you can create a supplier debit. See Settling supplier debits.
C	Amount Applied	Enter how much of the payment you want to apply to each purchase in this column.
D	Finance Charge	If part of the payment was used to pay finance charges, type the finance charge amount here.
E	Out of Balance	The Out of Balance amount must be zero before you can record the transaction. This field will show an out of balance amount if there is any variance between values in the Total Paid and Amount fields. If you have out of balance amounts, correct the amounts in the Amount Applied and Finance Charge fields.

6	If you are recording a cheque payment and the cheque has already been written, or if you are recording a transaction that doesn’t require a printed cheque (such as a petty-cash payment or Internet payment), select the Cheque Already Printed option.

7	If you want to print or email a remittance advice later, as part of a batch, select an option from the Remittance Advice Delivery Status list.

8	If you want to preview the remittance advice or cheque for this transaction, click Print and then choose Preview Cheque or Preview Remittance Advice. Note that the transaction is recorded before it is displayed.

9	If you want to print a cheque or remittance advice now, click Print and select the form type you want to print. Note that the payment is recorded before it is printed.

10	Click Record.

Paying bills electronically

When you have recorded the bill payments you want to pay electronically, you can prepare the electronic payment file for your bank to process. For more information, see ‘Paying suppliers electronically’.

To pay several bills at once

You can pay several outstanding bills at once in the To Do List window. The linked account for paying bills will be used for all supplier payments made from this window.

1	Click To Do List in any command centre. The To Do List window appears.

2	Click the A/P tab. A list of all unpaid purchases appears.

3	If you want to view details about a specific bill, click the zoom arrow () next to the bill.

4	Click in the select column () next to each bill you want to pay.

5	Click Pay Bills.

6	In the window that appears, enter a date for the selected transactions. This is the date that the transactions will be recorded in your accounts.

7	Click OK and then click Close.