Why do I get my paid bills appearing as negative expenses instead of positive expenses? I tried everything.

Hi there, @garchard.

I'm glad you've reached out to the Community. Allow me to share some information on why you're seeing negative expense amount on your vendor's information. 

Bill transactions will show up as an expenses if you haven't applied them to a payment yet. Once you've paid the bill, the bill-payment will show a positive amount on both Account Payable (A/P) and the transaction bank accounts when you run vendor reports.

If this is a stock item, make sure to select an asset account on the posting account and not the expense account. 

You can also verify if the bill-payment was linked to the correct bill. If not, you' need to delete it and apply the payment to the correct one. 

Please let me know how it goes by clicking the Reply button below. I'll be around to further assists you if you have additional questions about the Account Payable cycle. Have a good day ahead! 

Thank you for your reply.

I am still very confused about this even after seeking help twice from QB helpdesk. In July I received an invoice and entered it in QB Online as Bill. I paid the invoice manually and went to the outstanding Bill and pressed 'create payment'. It then recorded the Bill as Paid. However, in my Expenses Transactions it occurs as a negative expense, so it deducts the sum off my other expenses which is not right. The Help desk say that this is due to 'double entry' but I do not see it accrued in the expenses so the transaction goes negative instead of zero. 

If you could shed any further light on this issue I would be very grateful. Its starting me to be turned off QB when I see other part are a great advantage.

Many Thanks

Gareth

Hi Gareth

Can you inform us what account you have chosen on your bill. Navigate to the bill and select the drop down menu in the category field to the right of the account, is it showing as an expense or an income?

Hello,

I selected Bill under the Expense Transactions when first entering the suppliers invoice. Then used a category I named Sub-Contractor Company in the Accounting area that is defined as an Expense.  However, the sum did not appear in the Expense Transaction Table. I think went to the Bill yesterday and pressed the create payment hyperlink. On the resulting form I put the day I payed and my company bank account as the account/credit. The Bill then reported as Paid in the top right. 

Is it possible to delete the transaction and re-enter the details as I think there maybe a problem with corruption as last night the help lady was able to get my Total Transactions to include them as a positive expense but reproducing it this morning in both Total and Expense Transactions its again a negative expense. 

Hi garchard

You can delete the bill and payment. If you would like to delete the payment navigate to the suppliers account, Expenses > Suppliers > locate supplier > locate bill payment and select > at the bottom of the screen in the middle select the more option > delete. If you wish to delete the bill, Expenses > Suppliers > locate supplier > locate the bill > select the bill > more > delete.

Please can anyone help. 

I deleted the two Bill entries in case there was something wrong in my original entry. Again, I set up the Bill as outlined in the instructions in QB books and the internet for the invoice I received. Set 30 days as the payment. Picked Sub-contractor Company Fees as the category that is within my expense category list. The Bill table appeared under the supplier with a 'make payment' hyperlink on the right. Then I pressed the make payment entered the payment date and confirmed the amount and saved. Another table came into the suppliers page but now the figure is negative. In the original Bill table it says the Bill has been paid and Balance is zero. However, in my Expense Transactions table the amount is negative and is deducted out of my other expenses. This suggests its credit rather than expense, but I definitely put it as an expense. However, if I select Total Transaction it is there considered as an expense. I cannot understand this so I wonder if anyone can help?

I have also a problem with my Profit & Loss report. The Total Expenses does not include these to Bills and the figure given is even lower than the figure reported in the Expense Transaction Table. All my expenses entries are over the same financial year. QB help took screen dumps of this two days ago but have not got back to me. 

Many Thanks

Gareth

Hi garchard

We would be grateful if you can PM us on FaceBook or DM us on Twitter with the email address associated with your QuickBooks account to enable us to locate the case relating to your phone call and the corresponding screen shots. We would also be grateful if you can include your community name, garchard.

Hello,

I had a screen sharing session with the QB Help person. It was on Monday evening. It was the lady that took the screen shots as she said she wanted to refer it to more senior advisors who were only available the next morning. I have therefore no email to send. However, it should be in the chat records. 

I am happy to chat to the QB help team about this issue 

Hello Garchard

We have found the case the email support team have escalated regarding the profit and loss and the expenses and bills but there is  no updates at the moment.We have reached out to the agent you were in contact with and are waiting currently for a reply.

It does state on the case that the negative amounts showing are the bill payments themselves which is how QuickBooks  will show these transactions.

If the expense accounts are not correct and you are you using expense account rather than product in the bill or expense we will need to look at the screen shots to see if we can determine why this is.  We can not see the screen shots on the case that was created would it possible if you could add them on to the reply.

Or alternatively if you could give us a call on 08082345337 stating case number 538002283 as your reference and we can look at this for you now and get this expedited.

Thanks

Emma

@garchard 

Oh, I found this topic back in 2019. I have the same problem with negative bill payment. Is your problem solved?

The case provided is already closed and resolved, @Jane821.

I appreciate you for reaching out here in the Community. Have you tried deleting and recreating the bill and the bill payment as mentioned above? 

If not yet, you can follow the outlined steps below to do it:

1. Select the Expense menu.
2. Locate the Bill and the Bill Payment.
3. At the bottom, click More and then Delete.

Otherwise, you’ll need to contact our Technical Support team if the same thing happens. This way, they can investigate why the bill payment shows negative in the program.

Knowing how to manage bills is essential to run a business. This simplified guide will show you how to email receipts and bills in QuickBooks Online.

I’ll be around to help if you have additional questions or concerns with your bills and payments. Have a great day!                                                                                                                                       

Thanks @MadelynC  for the solution, but seriously my QB has thousand transactions of negative expenses made by mistakes, in fact that is not human's mistake. Do I have to go one by one to delete thousand bills and bill payments? is there other smarter solution?

Hello, Jane821.

Thanks for taking the time to reached out to us. Allow me to address your concern, and help get this straightened out. 

As of now, you can only delete the bills transactions one at a time since doing it by batch is currently unavailable in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

You can look for a third-party application and delete bills by batch. To avoid mistakes, ask for help from your accountant before deleting the transactions.

For more details, you can check out this article to help you with your bills transaction: Void or delete transactions in QuickBooks Online

Leave a comment anytime if you have concerns with your transactions. I'm always here to lend a helping hand. Have a good day!

I know this is an older post but, maybe it can help someone else. I had the same issue with a bill I paid and it showed up as a negative. I found it was because the date on the entered bill was wrong. It looked like I paid it twice in the system cause the date was after I had already made the payment. (example Bill was dated for 11/15 and I paid it on 11/9.) it through it out of whack. I changed the bill date to the correct date and it fixed it's self. Good luck

I'll take note of this @HughesKitchen.

Thank you for sharing with us how you've resolved the issue with bills showing as negative. It'll undoubtedly benefit our other customers who are having the same problem. 

If you have future concerns about QuickBooks, let us know. The Community is always here to help. Have a great rest of the day!

I have been trying to do a report of checks paid including payroll checks in numerical order & showing the amounts paid & totaling. 

When I do a report, it shows all checks as a negative & total as a negative....... 

I understand that its deducting from the account balance, but I need to send a weekly report to the bank showing checks written & totaling. 

Hi there, @Ronda9!

Before we can accomplish your goal for today, may I ask a few questions about the report in question? Saying you wanted to list a numerical order of all the checks created, can you tell me the name of your report and how you customise its transaction detail?

Keep me updated in the comments below. Hope to hear from you as soon as possible. Take care and stay safe!