Bills from vendors on auto-pay

I'll share information that could help you.

If every information in the bill is the same, you may consider setting up recurring bills. Here is how:

1. Enter the transaction the way you want it to show up each month. Do not select 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.
2. From the Edit menu, select Memorize [Transaction Name]. For example, Memorize Check.
3. Enter a Name. Then, decide how you want QuickBooks to handle it.

For detailed information, refer to this article: Create, edit, or delete memorized transactions.

Otherwise, you will have the happy path of entering bill and bill payments as you normally would. You can visit these articles for the detailed process: 

• Enter bills in QuickBooks Desktop.
• Pay bills in QuickBooks Desktop.

As for your tracking of due dates, you can use the AP Aging Detail/Summary and Unpaid Bills Detail Report. 

I will leave this article you can use in the future: Export reports as Excel workbooks in QuickBooks Desktop.

Feel free to post here again if you have further QuickBooks-related concerns. We are available 24/7 to lend a hand with each of your queries. Stay safe!

Thanks for the info ... The suggestion on using Memorized Transactions is a very good one, and I'll work into that.

I still would like more info / documentation, however, on the process of "schedule online payments", especially in then marking the invoice(s) as paid. I'm going to try one to walk through the process, but I'd like to read up on how QB planned the process to work. I've searched for "schedule" and "online" but nothing seems to come up for "schedule online payments". If you know of specific documentation for that, I'd appreciate it.  

Thanks again.

Hello there, @Deadwood Al. I'll help you get a documented guide about processing scheduled online payments in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT).

I appreciate you getting back here and considering the recommendation of my colleague. To know how you can set up a scheduled online payments in QBDT, you can go to the For future bill payments section of this article: Pay bills online from QuickBooks Desktop. 

Additionally, to further know information about this process, just scroll down to the Frequently asked questions (FAQs) part of the same article.

If there's any other thing you want to ask or know about managing vendor transactions, please drop a reply below. I'd be glad to provide additional assistance. 

Thank you ... While I haven't read this article in detail, it appears that it is something different than I was thinking of.  Here's more detail on my question:

We have a number of vendors where they automatically draft our bank account on a specific date each month. What I was initially looking for in Online Payments was a way to record the fact that the bill was paid via EFT draft so that an entry would credit checking and debit AP without the need to actually "write a check": At some point, we will use schedule online payment to process ACH payments, so the information you sent will be of help at that point, but right now my search is for something simpler (I think).

Without the need to actually cut a check, how do I move the dollars on the vendor invoice to credit checking and debit AP? I know we could bypass the entry of the bill and simply write a check, but that would then require re-entering a valid check number the next time we actually wrote on check stock, and it would require manually tracking the invoice for the date it should be paid. Seems like a lot of work for a simple problem. So I'm assuming there is a simple solution, I just don't know what it is yet. I was hoping that "Online Payments" was the solution, but it sounds like it is the solution for what we are going to do sometime in the future, but we will still have vendors who are drafting our checking account regularly (i.e. utilities, internet service, rent, etc.) and we need to record those payments and reduce AP liability.  ????  

I hope that better explains what I'm looking for.

Hello Deadwood Al

Thank you for providing those details. It seems as if creating a journal entry may be the best bet for a situation like this. However, I strongly recommend connecting with an accountant to see if this would be the better solution for your firm. If you don't have an accountant, no worries. We offer a ProAdvisor service where you can connect with experts within your area. Here's how:

1. Go to this Find my Accountant link.
2. In the Find an expert in section, choose what you're looking for, then use your search field to enter a City or ZIP code.
3. Select Search.
4. Browse through the results and find one that works best for your business. You can click on each ProAdvisor's profile to learn more information about them.
   

If you have any other questions, I'm just a post away. See you soon!

Hi @Deadwood Al 

You can use memorized transactions for bills and also to enter debit memos for ACH payments out of your checking accounts. Relating the two might be a manual task but someone can do that at their leisure or when they are reconciling the bank account, say. 

I don't know that there is a way to fully automate the task of recording a bill and and then recording an automatic ACH payment on a particular day for that bill. But you can certainly record a payment automatically to keep the cash balance accurate, and apply it to the bill later. (I am not sure how QBO handles the "numbering" of these recurring payments--I do this in desktop where it allows the transaction number to be blank. Hopefully the same is true of QBO.)

Alex_nj:   I'll read through your reply a few times, thanks for sending it. And, BTW, I don't have QBO so all is good there. I'm using QBDT Pro. Thanks again.

We have vendors that auto draft. All the utilities and insurance bills we set up this way. So for those AP transactions we enter the Bill to AP and then when the auto draft hits the bank we mark it as paid but when we "cut" the check we use the date as the check number and print to blank paper. This way you are not using up your preprinted check stock.

If you have more than one that hits on a day - then just use a variation - 07172024 or 71724 or 07224 etc.

This will reduce your AP liability and Cash Balance. Also gives you a visual when doing the bank reconcilement you can sort by check number and all of the auto drafts sort of then land in a group to tie back to your electronic transactions vs. physical checks on your bank statement.

Thanks for the comments: I did use another system that didn't allow EFT or ONLINE as inputs, so I came up with a numbering system to isolate those transactions, something like 8xxxx to identify draft transactions, 7xxxx to identify EFT initiated transactions, etc.   But those were workarounds, and I guess I just have a disappointed view of software systems that make you "work around" a problem rather than providing the solution within the software, especially when it is such a simple thing, like allowing something like EFT or ACH to be allowed and not assuming the next number when we try to print EFT/ACH transactions. And I certainly would not use normal check stock to print these type payment transactions: checks are for check payment, nothing else.

Wouldn't you set this up as a Recurring Transaction under Settings>Recurring Transactions?

You're on the right track if you want to set up bill automation by going through Settings and selecting the Recurring transactions if you're using QuickBooks Online (QBO), Dvernier. Let's dive into this topic further.

In QBO, you can streamline tasks by automating recurring journal entries, scheduling automatic invoice generation for subscription-based customers, and setting up automatic check writing or bill entry. To do so, you can follow the steps below:

1. Log into your QBO account.
2. Go to the Gear Icon ⚙, then select Recurring transactions under the Lists column.
3. Click the New tab, then choose Bill as the type of transaction to create and click OK.
   
   
   
   
4. Provide the template name and fill in all the required information.
5. Once done, click Save template.

However, if you're using QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT), you can automate bills using the Memorize Transaction feature. I'll be leaving you a guideline you can execute on your end:

1. Enter a transaction you want to show up each month. Don’t select Save. If a field contains details that may change, leave the field blank.
2. Go to the Edit menu and select Memorize [Transaction Name].
3. Type in a Name and then choose how you want QuickBooks to handle it.
4. Once finished, click OK.
   
   

With that, here are some resources to help you implement the steps for bill automation using the different QuickBooks products discussed:

• Create recurring transactions in QuickBooks Online
• Create, edit, or delete memorized transactions in QuickBooks Desktop

Additionally, I'll be leaving these articles about creating reports that you can use to gain financial insights into your business operations:

• Run a report in QuickBooks Online
• Create, access, and modify memorized reports

Don't hesitate to reach out to me again on this thread for any concerns with QuickBooks bill automation. I'm always willing to assist you in making your business run smoothly. Have a wonderful week!

I do use the memorized transaction feature A LOT for entering recurring bills into our Quickbooks Desktop, but I would LOVE to be able to memorize the recurring PAYMENTS for those bills as well. Right now, if I open the bill payment I want to memorize, the "memorize" button is grayed out indicating this feature is not available.

Thanks for joining the Community and getting involved with this thread, cecofficestaff. I appreciate your detailed information.

If you need to pay a vendor on a regular basis, you can save time by setting up an automatic recurring check payment. You'll need to find an existing check, or create a new one.

In the event you have an existing check for your vendor in the amount you want to pay, find it from any of the following.

From your Register:
 

1. In the top menu bar, go to Banking, then Use Register (or press Ctrl + R simultaneously).
2. If you have multiple accounts, choose your appropriate bank account.
3. Find and double-click the check you want to memorize.

From the Check Detail report:
 

1. In your top menu bar, go to Reports, Banking, then Check Detail.
2. Filter the Transaction Type to Check and Name to All vendors.
3. Locate and double-click a check you want to memorize.

From your Vendor Center:
 

1. In the top menu bar, go to Vendors, then Vendor Center.
2. Access your Transactions tab, then choose Checks.
3. Find and double-click the check you want to memorize.

If you haven't created a check yet, go to Banking, then Write Check (or press Ctrl + W), create your check as you want it to appear each time, then select Save & Close.

After you've found an existing check, or created a new one, you can memorize it using the steps in our Create an automatic recurring payment to a vendor article.

Please feel welcome to send a reply if there's any additional questions. Have a great Wednesday!

to ZachE ....

I think you partially missed the point ... it sounded to me like ceofficestaff knew about memorizing checks and he was really talking about setting up recurring invoices from vendors, but there was no way in QB to have recurring payments against those invoices. If I am not correct, please let me know. 

I also looked for something like that because in the Vendor profile (Transactions tab in Vendor Center), there is a difference in how Write Checks and Bill Payments are shown. Write Checks lets you identify a GL to post the payment to, but not an invoice number (unless you are willing to manually adjust every recurring payment you set up, which sort of defeats the purpose of recurring payments.) If you needed to reconcile payments for a Vendor, it would be more time consuming because Write Checks doesn't give the Vendor an invoice to apply the payment against. Bill Payment lists the invoices being pay on the stub of the check, making reconciliations much easier.

And please, don't do the standard QB response line that gives me detail on how to submit this to the crack Intuit Design Team. I know how to do that and I've done it more times than I care to think about. I will be long dead and my ashes scattered to the wind long before anything I've submitted actually comes to be ... maybe some of my suggestions are wacky, but some of them I know were good and worthwhile, but ........

Yes, that is what I was trying to find out. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain that in detail!