Pay Bill workflow

When you want to enter a bill ---> go to the +NEW in the upper right corner. And under VENDORS - select BILL. This is where you enter your bill. Then when you get ready to pay the bill, go back to the  +NEW  and under VENDORS, select PAY BILL .... If you follow this workflow, you will not have the issues that you are seeing.

My company set up AP/Bill Workflow within the last month. There is an issue with one of our vendors. When submitted for approval the approver receives the email stating there is a bill to approve. When they go through the link to QBO the bill has not populated in Task. They have also tried signing in and approaching the approval in their task venue directly. I have reviewed the vendor setup, deleted and resubmitted the bill and another employee was on the phone with QBO help for over 2 hours last week. As this issue is only with one of our vendors I do not know where else to look or possibly what small box was clicked that we are missing. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. 

Hi there, @VHale13.

Before we can accomplish your goal for today, may I ask you questions about the setup of your workflow? Can you tell me if both the checkmark options for task and email are chosen? And how you create the bill for approval, is it created using Save, Save and close, or Save and new button?

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

Thanks for the quick response! Responding to your questions; yes both areas are checked. Our vendor bill process is based on PO's. Vendor bill is received it is entered against the PO, saved, and copied to bill. Bill is then updated with any further information required and copy of vendor bill attached. At this time it is saved and submitted for approval. All other vendors go through workflow fine but one vendor and one of our largest goes through the process with email sent to approver with a link and a CC to accounting but the bill does not populate in QBO approver Task for approval and when I look at the bill is "pending approval". 

Thanks for the quick response, @VHale13.

Let's go through some troubleshooting steps, so all your bills populate in the approver tasks for approval in your QuickBooks Online (QBO) account. 

Based on your description, I can tell that you've created the bill and used the approval workflows accordingly. With this, the request for approval should populate the approver's Task menu.

Since your approvers are unable to view the bill in the Task menu, your account may have a browser cache-related issue. Your browser saves files to load websites faster on your next visit. But over time, it'll get outdated, which can cause performance issues using QBO.

To fix this, you can perform some troubleshooting steps. Start by pulling up your QuickBooks Online (QBO) account using a private browser (incognito). Here's how:

• Press Ctrl + Shift + N (Google Chrome)
• Ctrl + Shift + P (Firefox)
• Control + Option + P (Safari)

Once signed in, let them go to the Tasks menu to review open tasks. They can also refer to this article for the complete guide: Add and review tasks for your team in the Task menu.

If the bill you want populates the Task menu and is successfully approved by your approvers, return to your default browser and clear its cache. This will refresh the system and remove older data that causes viewing and performance issues. However, if this matter continues, I'd recommend using other supported browsers.

Once everything is all set, you may also want to check out this article as your reference to learn more about setting up workflows to send reminders to your customers or your team in QBO: Use workflows in QuickBooks Online Advanced to send reminders.

Please feel free to let me know if you have other concerns about using bill approval workflows in QBO. I'm always ready to help. Take care, and I wish you continued success, @VHale13.

Rea_M Thank you for your response. My question on this solution is that our issue is with only one of our vendor accounts, all other vendors pass through workflow with no issues. I will have everyone follow your instructions for updating the browser cache as it may be a possible issue.  

Thanks for replying back to us, @VHale13. 

I appreciate you giving those instructions to everyone so we can narrow down the cause of the problem. 

Keep us updated and reach back out if the steps don't help fix the issue. I'll be just around the corner! 

Candice C thanks for the future explanation. All employees did update their Browser Cache and the issue still remains. Please advise what the next step is to resolving this issue. Happy Holidays to All!! 

Hello, VHale13.

Happy holidays to you as well. I appreciate your time in keeping us in the loop and for doing the solutions given by my colleagues. I'd like to step in and help you fix the workflow for that particular bill and vendor. 

The issue is likely caused by the conditions on your template. So, we'll want to review the conditions and edit if necessary. Simply open the workflow template, then check the conditions under the When this happens section. 

Also, we'll want to review how the vendor's bill was created. This might also be the reason why it won't show up on the Tasks page. 

If everything is correct, and both the bill and the conditions fit together, then this is likely caused by the workflow template itself. To fix this, we'll want to delete and recreate the template. Take note of the existing settings before doing this, so we can recreate them easily. 

To delete the template: 

1. Go to the Workflows page.
2. Find your active template.
3. Click the three dots icon under the Actions column.
4. Select Delete, then proceed with Delete on the confirmation prompt. 

Recreate the template with the same settings by clicking on the + Custom workflow button. 

I see that my colleague linked a couple of articles relating to workflows. For convenience, I'll include them on my post if you'd like to review how to use workflows effectively: 

• Use workflows in QuickBooks Online Advanced to send reminders
• Create custom workflows in QuickBooks Online Advanced

The year-end is about to come. We do have a guide to help you with the tasks you'll face during the tax season. If you need help in the near future, I'll add this article for you: Year-end guide for QuickBooks Online. 

Drop by again if you have questions about your workflows. If you encounter any other difficulties managing other entries or running reports, let me know and I'll gladly help you out again. 

Jamespaul, 

Followed your instructions listed in your message from December 22 to re-create the template and it worked! Took a few days to get everyone back from holiday to test but as of this morning it is working like a charm. Thank you and Happy New Year!!

I do have a question regarding the Workflow portion of QBO, is this a Beta program? While I was reaching out to the QBO community another employee contacted QBO support through the phone #. They spent approximately 6 hours on the phone with them remotely entering our system and in the end they said Workflow is a Beta program and they were unable to help. Just wondering at the 2 very different results. 

You're most welcome, @VHale13. I'll share some additional insights regarding the QuickBooks Online Workflow.

Workflow is a fully functional feature, not a beta program. And this functionality is available exclusively in QuickBooks Online Advanced. Therefore, if you have QuickBooks Online Simple Start or QuickBooks Online Plus, then this feature wouldn't be accessible.

Here are some helpful articles about how to add and manage workflows in QBO.

• Create custom workflows in QuickBooks Online Advanced
• How to set up and use bill approval workflows in QuickBooks Online Advanced

We'd love to help you further and answer your queries regarding workflows or QuickBooks in general. Just leave a comment on the thread so we can respond as soon as we can. Happy holidays!