Can't you apply a journal entry or credit memo to open bills by going to Pay bills? Error message of 'You must set a transaction amount'

Paying your open bill is my priority, @arlene2.

I’m here to help you ensure you’re able to record your bill payments properly. Let’s get started!

First, the error prompt you’ve receive shows that you’ve entered a “0.00” amount in creating the credit memo, sales receipt or any form of payments. In creating a transaction in QuickBooks Online, its amount should be greater than 0, otherwise it’s not a payment.

On the other hand, yes, you can apply either a journal entry or a credit memo to your open bills. However, if you’ll use a journal entry, it will be for recording purposes only. It will not be considered as an expense. The affected accounts are your bank and the Accounts Payable (AP).  While, if you’ll use a credit memo, it means that there’s no actual payments made.

To ensure that your payments are recorded and applied accurately, here’s how:

1. Login to your QuickBooks Online account.
2. Go to Expenses from the menu tab.
3. Locate the bill you want to pay.
4. Under the Action column, click Make a Payment.
5. In the Bill Payment page, review the auto-populated information displayed.
6. Click Save and Close.

Here‘s the other way to pay your bill:

1. Click the Plus Icon.
2. Choose Pay Bills.
3. Select the vendor.
4. Once you’ve chosen the vendor, all the open transactions created for him or her will be listed on the right corner of the screen.
5. Choose the transactions you want to include.
6. Enter all the necessary information.
7. Click Save and Close.

    

   

    

That should do it!

For future reference, you may check out this video tutorial: Bills.

If you’re having difficulty with applying your bill payments, I’d suggest reaching out to our Customer Care team. An agent will be able to check your account securely and further assist you via secured remote access session.

Keep me posted on how this turns out on your end. I’m always here to help you with recording and applying bill payments.

Hi all,

I just figured out a (slow and manual) workaround to this error message, so thought I'd share. 

Issue:

You have open journal entries and credit memos that are unapplied to your bills, resulting in the A/P aging report looking worse than it actually is. When you try to apply these records to the bill through the bill pay function as a net $0 payment, you get the error message "You must set a transaction amount". 

Solution: 

It is possible to apply your journal entries and credit memos to your bills through this feature. This error message only seems to come up when you have too many rows selected. If you unclick some of them and only apply a few at a time, the error message doesn't pop up. 

This is an anecdote, but my guess from testing this looks like both the $ amounts you're applying and the number of transactions you're applying seem to matter? It worked for me, but try it out on your end. 

Happy troubleshooting all :)