Thank your for your reply to my question. Is there a more efficient way to pay bills and link the CC charges, instead of going through several steps?

You have to go through those steps outlined by my colleague, hecjr2.

There are several transactions involved with the credit card charges. That's why you need to link them to the bills.

I'm adding this article you can use to track expenses: Accounts Payable workflows in QuickBooks Desktop.

Let me know if there's anything else you need with QuickBooks. I'm always glad to help you.

To get QB to accept the entry as an Accounts Payable charge, you will need to enter a name in the "customer:job" column of the Item.  Just use the name of the Vendor you are entering the charge for.  This should allow you to save the entry without the continued error message.