How to enter a bill and pay by credit card

CCbooks, it's great to see you again today. I can help you out with this process in QuickBooks Desktop.

Creating a bill is as easy as clicking the Enter Bills button on the Home window. Likewise, paying them is done by clicking Pay Bills on the Home window. Once the Pay Bills window launches, you can check off the bill you'd like to pay, and then choose the payment method at the bottom of the screen. You can add credits or anything else as needed and once you're ready to complete the payment transaction, just click Pay Selected Bills. Check out this screenshot from my Looney Toons themed test account.

Here are a couple articles to keep on hand for the bills feature in QuickBooks Desktop.

• Enter bills
• Pay bills in QuickBooks Desktop

I hope that helps! You know where to find us if you need anything else. :)

BRILLIANT!  Made my day! 

That's awesome! I love hearing it and I'm happy to have been able to help. :)

We are a resell company. I prefer to enter credit card charges through bill pay as I use bill pay to track when I am approaching terms with our manufacturers. We have a consultant come and take a look at our books each quarter and she prefers me to use the Enter Credit Card Charges (in the banking tab) window. She likes to be able to see the details of the transaction. When I use the bill pay method, it comes over as a credit card charge with only the total of the bill. Is there a quick way to get the details of the charge? Double clicking on the charge does not take you to the bill.

When I enter the bill and pay the bill by credit card, that all works and sets up a liability to the credit card company.  When I pay the credit card balance off, how do I record it so that my liability goes back to 0?

Hi jdolan14,

Thanks for joining us here! I know how important it is to keep your books accurate in the running of your business. QuickBooks Desktop enables you to set up, use, and pay your credit card accounts when needed. I invite you to check out this article for the step-by-step process to follow in your company file: Set up, use, and pay credit card accounts

I hope this helps you get back on track! Don't hesitate to reach out if you have more questions.

I have 2 credit cards - how can I make one default in the Bill Pay window? I use one more than the other.

Hi PA6. Thanks for reaching out to us in the community. I'd be happy to answer your question so you can continue being the best at managing your business. QuickBooks allows you to change the default credit card and you can accomplish this by renaming it in your chart of accounts. Here's how:

1. Click the Account menu.
2. Select Chart of Accounts.
3. Hover your mouse on your Credit card account, and hit right-click on your mouse.
4. Navigate to the Edit Account option, the accounts in Chart of Account are listed in alphabetical order. I'd recommend editing and renaming the account to make it appear first in the list according to alphabetical order. 
5. Click the Save and Close button.

Let me know if this info helps. I'll be a message away if you need anything else. 

I have seen this answer many times before contacting you. I am not the only person who wants this solved. your solution DOES NOT WORK. As you can see, I have my chart of accounts using Capital One listed first and the Pay Bills window ALWAYS defaults to NG American Express. That card is listed last in my chart of accounts.
Please help - thank you

Hello PA6,

Thanks for letting us know that the steps my colleague shared didn't work for setting a default account in the Pay Bills window for QuickBooks Desktop. I'll follow up with him to ensure that we're all on the same page with this option and the steps to set up default accounts for this feature in the program. In the meantime, I'll guide you through how to set a default account for the Pay Bills window.

I'm happy to share that this is a fairly simple process that's completed in your Preferences. It's just a few steps, and I welcome you to follow along below.

1. Select Edit from the top menu.
2. Choose Preferences.
3. Click Chequing from the left menu.
4. On the My Preferences tab, check the box Open the Pay Bills form with.
5. Select the account you want from the drop-down menu.
6. Click OK to save the setting.

Now each time you go to the Pay Bills window, it should default to the account you've chosen in the setting. Without this setting configured, the program simply defaults to the last account used to pay a bill in that screen. Give these steps a shot and feel free to comment again with how it goes this time.

Wishing you the best!

Hi Laura,

the preference option only allows a bank account, not a credit card (see attached). 

Sometimes the credit card I DO want to use does default and it's great! I don't know what triggers that to remain the default.

I opened the register for the credit card (and left it open) .

I opened Chart of Accounts and hi-lited the card I want (and left it open)

Sadly,, it changes back again - to a card I rarely use. 

What is the trigger point for the card to be defaulted?

thank you for working on this - 

Good callout, PA6. That was an oversight on my part. For those instances where the credit card you want does show up without you picking it from the drop-down menu, it could have to do with what I mentioned earlier about the last transaction you entered having used that account. However, I am seeing through my own testing that it may be different for credit card accounts.

In this case, what my colleague mentioned looks like it could be right with the program defaulting to the alphabetical naming of the cards when you open the Pay Bills window and have the one of the credit card options chosen as the Pay Method. What you can try is editing the names of the cards in the chart of accounts to something else, then changing the name back to what you want it to be immediately. This may trigger the program into that alphabetical sequencing.

Another troubleshooting step you can try is called resorting lists. What this does is put lists back into their default order, which can also help with this sort of situation because it forces the program to make a change. I recommend trying this even if you haven't changed the order of your lists at all, although it looks like you may have given your earlier screenshot. This article explains in more detail and walks you through the steps: Re-sort lists in QuickBooks Desktop

If that's still not doing the trick though, I recommend connecting with our support team to go over this further. That way, we can take a closer look at this with you to help you get back on track. You can reach out using the options outlined here: Intuit QuickBooks Desktop software support policies

Feel free to keep us posted here with how it goes.