Accounts Payable on Autopay

RE: How can we best enter a recurring bill AND the automatic bill payment?

You cant. QB doesn't support automatic bill payments.

RE: Is there a way to flag the customer to not have the bill show up in "Pay Bills"? 

No. Customers don't have anything to do with pay bills. Only vendors show up there. Also, QuickBooks won't tell you which vendors didn't send a bill. It's not something people usually worry about.

RE: Or a filter in Pay Bills to show customers on autopay vs those that are not?

Again, pay bills has nothing to do with customers. No, there's no way to filter for vendors on autopay (what is that in any case? Is that something you've set up in QuickBooks as a service?)

Generally, when using Accounts Payable, assume the old school model of getting a bill in the mail, or email, that is due at some later date, when you'll go use pay bills to create a payment. The payment is usually a check or a credit card charge.

If you have bills that are on auto-pay, like a credit card bill or utilities, there may not really be any reason to use Accounts Payable. Instead you could just use a bank check (or credit card charge if the bill is paid by credit card) that you've memorized and set to record each month.  Still, it seems that would only be useful if the bill is exactly the same each month. I suppose some are, though I don't get any bills that are like that.

Thanks for reaching out to us about this billing concern, @AndreaJB.

Before anything else, you mentioned about autopay, may I know if you're referring to customer payments or vendor payments? Are you using Online Bill Pay in QuickBooks Desktop for contractor payments? If not, may I know the service you're using now? Any information will help me with you concern.

If you are using Online Bill Pay, the system records vendor payment automatically in QuickBooks so your records are accurate, and bills are marked paid. See this link for more information: Use Online Bill Pay in QuickBooks Desktop.

Also, please know that the Pay Bills window is non-customizable to filter customers on autopay or not. This window will only display outstanding bills to pay along with the vendors you owe.

Please come back here with the additional details so I can help you further. Mention my name also to notify me of your reply.

Hi @Jen_D !

Thanks for the quick response!  I am referring to Vendor payments.  We are not using online bill pay, we are paying via the autopay setup contained within each Vendor's portal.

Thank you!

Hi there, AndreaJB.

I appreciate you for coming back to the thread and adding further details and clarification about your concern. Let me discuss how Pay Bills works in QuickBooks Desktop. Then, I'll ensure you can enter the recurring bill and the automatic bill payment by performing the steps below. 

You can always create and manage repeating transactions in QuickBooks Desktop. With this, you can create a memorized entry to start entering a recurring bill in QBDT. 

Here's how:

1. Enter the transaction the way you want it to show up each month. Don’t click Save. If a field contains info that may change, leave the field blank. For example, leave the Memo field blank on a recurring check so you can enter a different memo when you need to.
2. From the Edit menu, choose Memorize Bill.
3. Enter a Name. Then, select how you want QuickBooks to handle it.
4. Enter other necessary details and select OK.
5. Select Save & Close.

You can open this article to see further details: Create, edit, or delete memorized transactions. This also provides steps on how to edit and delete the created memorized transactions.

Once done, you can click this article to view instructions on how you can enter or record automatic bill payments by setting up a recurring payment in QuickBooks Desktop: Create an automatic recurring payment (check) to a vendor.

On the other hand, the Pay Bills window only helps you to settle your payables. With this, all transactions that appear in the said section are unpaid bills. That said, filtering the Pay Bills to show the Vendors on autopay vs those who are not is currently unavailable.

Lastly, you may refer to this article to view how Accounts Payable is used so you can track the money you owe and how their entries work in QBDT: Accounts Payable workflows in QuickBooks Desktop.

Please don't hesitate to click the Reply button below if you have other concerns with paying bills or any vendor transactions. I'm always here to help, AndreaJB. Have a great day!