Why Expense Shows as a Positive Number and Bill Payment as a Negative?

Hi there, Victoria_M.

I appreciate you posting in the Community. Let me provide you with information about expenses and bill payment reports. 

The Expense report shows up as positive, which indicates a debit. This means that more money is coming into the company, which increases the company's assets. This is an accounting-based procedure.

The Bill Payment List report shows the amount depending on the payment method you use. Choosing a bank method will appear as a negative on the report, while selecting a credit card payment will show as positive. 

On the other hand, making a payment using your credit card will increase your liability, and making a payment through your bank will decrease your asset.

For more information, you can refer to this article: How accounts are affected by debits and credits. It's also helpful if you plan to edit account balances using a journal entry.

You may find this article useful in case you want to customize reports: Customize reports in QuickBooks Online.

If you have any additional questions concerning reports, don't hesitate to get in touch with us. We're here to help all the time. Have a nice day!

I understand the Dr. and Cr. part. It's just QBO is different from Desktop, and I am not able to run vendor transaction report the way I used to. 

What is the best way to run such report, so that I can see the correct total with expense and bill payments as negatives? Do I have to manually change it in Excel? This would be ridiculous if I need to run several dozen vendor reports. 

@Victoria_M 

What is the best way to run such report, so that I can see the correct total with expense and bill payments as negatives?

If you want to see the expense as a positive amount and the bill payment as a negative amount, you need to enter all expenses as bills (credits A/P) and then subsequently pay the bill (debits A/P).  If you enter transactions as expenses (as you did for the $630 expense from your screenshot), it will only show the expense posting and no payment.  That's because when you use the expense function in QBO (New > Expense), you are saying that you paid for the expense at the time you incurred it which bypasses A/P.  In QB Desktop, you record it as either a check or credit card charge (Desktop does not have the Expense function) but it posts to a vendor the same way.

this doesn't make any sense.

If I create an expense, the amount shows as positive no matter if the payment account is a checking account or a credit card account.

But when I run a transaction report by vendor for all expenses, some are positive and some are negative so the report doesn't total properly.

Hey there, @impulsetakeoffs. 

Thanks for chiming in on this thread. 

To review your account with you and to figure out why this is occurring, I recommend contacting our Customer Support Team. Here's how: 

1. Go to the Help icon in the top right-hand corner. 
2. Press the Contact Us button. 
3. Enter your question and hit Let's talk. 
4. Scroll down and choose to Get a callback. 

Keep us updated on how the call goes. We want to ensure that you get this taken care of as soon as possible. Have a great day! 

@impulsetakeoffs 

"But when I run a transaction report by vendor for all expenses, some are positive and some are negative so the report doesn't total properly."

When you first run the Transaction List by Vendor report, it includes all transactions (bills, bill payments, checks, cc charges, etc.) so the total is meaningless.  You will need to filter by transaction type (or any other filter you want to apply) and it will total correctly.