and now we will learn how to enter and record bills that we received from vendors in QuickBooks
the word bill and the word invoice mostly mean the same thing we call it or QuickBooks calls
in an invoice if we are the ones sending it to a customer and QuickBooks calls it a bill if
we're the ones receiving it from a vendor but basically it's a document asking someone to pay
for something that they took or used the bill window is very easy to enter and there's not
that much information to put when you enter a bill but the question is what areas of your accounting
will be affected well of course entering a bill is a transaction so of course your general ledger
and chart of accounts will be affected and those results will show up on the trial balance but from
that very same bill your vendor records will also be changed and in our case we're looking at the
vendor records through the vendor balance detail let's take a look at our first example let's
imagine on January 22 we receive the electric bill from con Edison and the bill is a thousand dollars
and it's bill number six one six one okay what will happen in the trial balance is we receive
an electric bill from con Edison on January 22 and we did not pay it on january 22 well we receive
the electric service for a thousand dollars so we have to record that as an expense and
of course because we owe the money at the moment we receive the bill accounts payable will show up
on the trial balance for a thousand dollars now what about the vendor records well in the vendor
balance detail it'll show specifically con Edison whom we owe a thousand dollars to so let's go back
to the transaction and read it into the quickbooks online to be able to enter a bill we click expend
says okay now we're not really actually we're not going to click expense we're going to click
this plus sign because that has everything and under the column of vendors we click bill now
this is what the enter bill window looks like I'm going to fit it right into the video screen here
stretch it a little taller so this bill was dated I believe it was dated January 22 so we'll scroll
back to January 22 and it was from con Edison and the build number was six one six one and
the reason we got the bill helps us determine which expense account it is which is which in
this case is electric expense and the amount of the bill the amount of the bill is $1,000 push
the tab key and now we have everything we need now in this particular example the bill is not
associated with any particular customer but later we will see how to track costs by customer for now
you can click Save and close or save and new and get this message that the bill is recorded now
of course there's lots of advertisements that QuickBooks has that pop up as you're trying to
learn but for this one we will click no thanks now let's check the results in all reports we
can see that the trial balance is exactly what we predicted accounts payable showed up for the
first time as $1,000 and electric expense showed up as $1,000 if we go back to the custom reports
and we look at the vendor balance detail we can see just only con Edison is owed $1,000
for this bill on this date now in order to fully understand this let's do a second bill on January
23rd we receive the repair a bill from rex repair it was $2,000 bill number six two six two now this
is interesting because repair expense is in the chart of accounts but rex repair is not yet on
the vendor list we can add the vendor on the fly as we record the transaction so we clicked
the question we click the plus sign to get a list of every possible transaction then we click under
the vendor column you click bill now rex repair is not on the list so we click add new and for
now we'll just put the name believe me after well it's cap lock so we'll do the opposite rex repair
believe me after you save it after you enter this bill you can check your vendor list and you'll see
rex has been added to the vendor list now the date was January 23rd and the bill number was
six two six two and the reason for the bill click under the word account that click the pull down
arrow the reason for the bill is repair expense which happens to be in the chart of accounts and
the amount is two thousand and again we're not yet tracking it by customer even though we could so we
have the who the when the what the why and the how much all recorded on this bill now when we
click Save will check the results in the trial balance and we'll come back to well we'll go to
the reports first we check the trial balance and we see accounts payable is now three thousand and
repair expense has shown up on the trial balance for the first time as two thousand but if you
ask why is accounts payable three thousand you should then open the report that tells you why
the vendor balance detail and you can clearly see we owe a thousand to con Edison we owe two
interrex repair and that's why total account payable in the trial balance is equal to 3000