Apply a discount to a supplier bill

Thank yoi for the tip!  You’re right QB makes it more difficult. I liked the way it’s handle on desktop version... 

QBO needs to fix this because when you print the cheque to pay the bill with the discount, it doesn't display the original invoice amount nor the discount taken. This is really unprofessional! Why does QBO treatsit as an income as a reduction of expense, which is the right way of doing it???

Hi beilan_gao,

When suppliers offer discounts it's important to be able to accurately track them so that your books balance. QuickBooks Online offers a couple different solutions for tracking supplier discounts to make your job easy! Let me explain the options.

The first option is what our Community member @mikelovell outlined in his response above. You can represent the discount as a line item on the bill categorized toward an income account. You'll want to enter it as a negative amount, then when you pay the bill you'll notice the amount owing reduced by the amount of the line entered. 

The other way to go about this is to enter a Supplier Credit to apply to your bill payment in the amount of the discount. To create a supplier credit, please follow the steps below: 

1. Select the + New button in the upper left corner.
2. Choose Supplier Credit.
3. Select the supplier that has issued the discount from the Supplier dropdown.
4. Enter the corresponding Category details and Line details. In this case you could just make note that this is a Supplier Discount.
5. Select Save and close. 

The article linked below includes the steps you can follow to enter and apply the credit to a bill:

• Enter a credit from a supplier

If there's another method for recording a supplier discount that you'd like to see added to QuickBooks Online, I encourage you to Submit Feedback. Our product development team wants to hear from loyal customers like you. Go to the Gear icon, then Feedback to let them know what new and improved features you'd like to see.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Thanks for the response!

I'd like to add one last scenario:

So, I have an early payment discount, and I apply it to the bill using an income account and a negative amount. Perfect.

However, let's say I miss the early payment date and thus no longer can claim such discount.

What should I do?

My first intuition is to keep the discount line on the bill, and offset it somehow - however I don't know how.

Hi camiapi1995,

Thanks for joining this thread! It's great that you're already brainstorming how to deal with the scenario of a missed early payment discount. I'd be happy to help shed some light on this as well. 

Removing the discount line from your bill would be the most straight forward way to deal with this since you're now paying the full amount of the bill. You can remove it by going to the bill, selecting Edit, removing the line and then Saving. However, you could still leave the discount line as it is and then try to offset it using a Journal Entry or an Expense. To determine how to correctly go about this, I recommend checking with an accountant. They can walk you through how to record this in the way that best suits your business needs. You can invite your accountant to view your QuickBooks Online company through the My Accountant screen from the left hand menu. If you're not currently working with an accountant, you can use the Find a pro to help button to search for a QuickBooks-certified ProAdvisor near you. 

I hope this helps. Let me know if there's anything else I can assist with!

I am having an issue with QuickBooks not showing discount amounts on vendor payment stubs.  I have a vendor who will not give us credit for the early payment discount because our check stubs do not show the discount taken, just the net paid.  I have to manually write the discount on the check stubs!!??

Hello juli66. Thanks for taking the time to chime in on this thread. I can see the benefit of having the discount displayed the way you'd like for it to be displayed. I recommend sending feedback to our engineers if you'd like to see different ways to display the discount. You can send feedback by clicking the Gear icon and looking for Feedback. New product ideas and improvements are largely based on the feedback we get from users like you. Let me know if you have other questions, I'm here to help.