QuickBooks Bill Pay explained: How it works, benefits, and setup

What is QuickBooks Bill Pay?

Many small businesses rely on QuickBooks to record bills, keep their books up to date, and manage the accounting for their business. Now, QuickBooks can help automate recording bills and paying them using QuickBooks Bill Pay—a built-in Accounts Payable automation solution for businesses that use QuickBooks. Whatever your business needs, QuickBooks has a Bill Pay solution to help you manage bills more efficiently.

Our Bill Pay subscription plans

Explore our Bill Pay subscription plans to find the one that’s right for your needs, with options starting with no monthly fees. 

• With Bill Pay Premium, you’ll have access to tools to manage payments to contractors, accessing more ACH payments and easily file 1099s within QuickBooks. 
• With Bill Pay Elite, you’ll get even more powerful tools to manage your bill approval workflows, so you can delegate bill payments to your team, while also protecting your important financial data and maintaining a system of checks and balances.

QuickBooks Bill Pay is packed with powerful automation designed to help you ditch the time-consuming manual work of paying bills. You can save time spent recording, paying, and reconciling your bills across multiple software products and locations, and streamline your bill payments by doing it all in one place, right inside QuickBooks.

Pay vendors on time, every time.

A single late payment can drop your credit score. QuickBooks Bill Pay allows you to schedule upcoming payments so that you can stress less about due dates.

QuickBooks Bill Pay can be used for your business bills. And because you can make sure your vendor gets paid as scheduled, it can help you hold on to your cash longer and better manage your cash flow.

How does online QuickBooks Bill Pay work?

QuickBooks Bill Pay lets you send checks and ACH bank payments quickly and easily. Recipients don’t have to set up anything on their end. All you need to do is enter your bank account information to pay bills online, directly inside QuickBooks. You can settle invoices, balance books, and schedule bill payments in real-time.

First, you’ll decide how you’d like to complete the online payment.

• QuickBooks Checking: Use your QuickBooks Checking account to pay bills directly. 
• Other bank accounts: Connect your financial institution by entering your user ID and password, or manually completing the micro-deposit process. 

Next, determine how you’d like to pay the vendor.

• ACH bank payment: Bill Pay supports ACH transfers, making it simple to pay bills online in a few steps.
• Check: If your vendor prefers receiving paper checks, you don’t have to spend extra time issuing and mailing them. QuickBooks can do it for you.

What are the benefits of QuickBooks Bill Pay?

With everything business owners have on their plates, Bill Pay cuts down the time and effort required to pay bills and balance books. No more going to the bank, waiting on hold to pay over the phone, or signing in to separate accounts to access invoices. Bill Pay lets you do it all at once, directly within your QuickBooks account. You can also enjoy greater control over when and how your business pays its bills.

Vendors email or you upload bills to QuickBooks Bill Pay, then you can review, save, and pay them.

Extra time is a valuable commodity for small business owners. Bill Pay helps free up that time by taking on the logistics of sending payments to vendors and can reduce manual entry by half**. When a vendor sends you an invoice, simply import it and QuickBooks can pre-fill a bill for you. AI creates ready-to-process bills – with line item details. Simply review, save, and pay. All you need to do is review it and save the bill. The tool also allows users to schedule automatic payments, so they’re sent on time.

Take the work out of paying bills and pay multiple vendors at a time or combine multiple bills into one payment. 

When you manage the money coming in and out of your business from one tool, it simplifies keeping cash flow under control and reduces the time spent in the process. Whether you want to send a payment through ACH bank transfers or by paper check, QuickBooks can do it for you.

Track vendors and contractors who will need a 1099 issued at the end of the year, then easily file those 1099s with QuickBooks. 

See your vendors and everyone who needs a 1099 all in one place, to help you stay compliant. Get unlimited 1099 e-filing, with printing and mailing, for no additional fee. **

Get faster approvals with workflows and controls for more peace of mind 

Set up bill approval workflows and save time chasing manual approvals. Automate your processes with custom workflows that fit your unique business needs. Assign roles and permissions to decide who creates, approves, and pays bills. Set controls to limit access to your books.

Stay tax ready

Keep digital records of your bills and payments in one place, not across multiple folders or spreadsheets. Give your accountant access to make tax time easier.

With QuickBooks Bill Pay you can manage bills, vendor records, 1099s, and financial reports all in one place. Streamline your accounts payable with tools to optimize your cash flow, fuel your growth, and stay tax ready.

How do you set up Bill Pay for QuickBooks?

QuickBooks makes it easy for small businesses to pay bills online. Watch the video tutorial, or follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your QuickBooks Online company file.
2. Select Get paid & pay, then Bills.
3. Create a new bill or select an existing unpaid bill.
4. Select Schedule Payment or Save and Schedule Payment depending on what type of bill you’re reviewing: 
5. If you create a new bill, you will have the option to schedule the bill right away by clicking Save and Schedule Payment.
6. For an unpaid bill, schedule directly from Expenses, Vendors, or Bills.
7. Choose which bank account you want to use as your funding source and withdraw funds from. Banks you’ve already connected to your QuickBooks account will appear as options, but you can also choose Add a bank account. The full amount of the bill appears by default, but you can select Edit if you want to schedule a partial payment.
8. In the Payment account in QuickBooks dropdown, select the corresponding account from your QuickBooks chart of accounts to sync your payment information accurately in your QuickBooks Online account. Or, select + Add new to create a new account in QuickBooks to track your bill payment information.
9. Choose which payment method your payee prefers and complete the required fields.
10. For Withdrawal date, select the date when you want the funds to withdraw from your bank account, up to 90 days in advance.
11. Review the payment instructions, then if everything looks correct, select Schedule payment.

Bill Pay gives you the tools to simplify your accounts payable and manage bill payments, all in one place. And it gives new members another reason to join the millions of business owners who rely on QuickBooks accounting software.

If you are a QuickBooks Online customer already, you can try Bill Pay today.  If you’re not a customer, you can learn more about QuickBooks Online here.

Disclaimers

QuickBooks Bill Pay: QuickBooks Bill Pay account subject to eligibility criteria, credit, and application approval. Subscription to QuickBooks Online required. Not available in U.S. territories or outside the U.S. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Inc., licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. For more information about Intuit Payments' money transmission licenses, please visit https://www.intuit.com/legal/licenses/payment-licenses/.

Automatic Matching: QuickBooks Online will only match bank withdrawals with transactions processed through QuickBooks Bill Pay. Not all transactions are eligible.

Unlimited 1099 e-file: 1099 forms are e-filed with the IRS only for the current filing year and for payments recorded in QuickBooks. Includes state filings for eligible states participating in IRS Combined Federal/State Filing program. If you have the Bill Pay Basic plan, 1099 e-filing services will be charged at the standard 1099 E-file Service pricing. 

User Roles and Approval Workflows: Available in QuickBooks Bill Pay Elite or QuickBooks Online Advanced. Not available for QuickBooks Online Simple Start customers. 

Reduce manual entry by 57%: Based on U.S. QuickBooks customers who record bills in QuickBooks using automation tools on the Apps/Bills page compared to customers not using these tools, from February 2024 to January 2025.