Entering a bill
Getting bills into Books by email, upload, or hand entry; what the intake extraction does; and how to code, split, and route a bill correctly.
How-toFor Bookkeepers, Business owners, Firm staff
Four ways in
| Route | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Email forwarding | Forward the bill to your intake address; extraction reads it and creates a draft. | The default. Vendors email bills; forwarding is one action. |
| Upload | Drop PDFs or images into Document Intake, individually or in bulk. | Paper bills, scanned batches, catching up a backlog. |
| Manual entry | Type it in directly. | Bills with no document, or corrections. |
| API | Posted by an integration under an organization API key. | Procurement systems and expense platforms that already hold the data. |
What extraction produces
Intake reads the document and proposes a bill: vendor, invoice number, dates, amounts, line detail, and a coding suggestion based on how you have coded that vendor before. It arrives as a draft with the source document attached, never as a posted bill.
Document processing
Document Intake
| Document | Type | Status | Extracted | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| rothman-4471.pdf | Invoice | Extracted | $2,410.00 · Rothman Supply | Review |
| beacon-legal-aug.pdf | Invoice | Extracted | $3,750.00 · Beacon Legal | Review |
| chase-stmt-jul.pdf | Bank statement | Extracted | 142 transactions | Review |
| scan_0041.jpg | Receipt | Failed | — | Unreadable image |
Intake shows each document, what it was detected as, and whether extraction succeeded.
- 1Document and detected type
- 2Extraction status
- 3Review the extracted values
Illustration of the screen layout
Coding the bill
- 1
Confirm the vendor.
If it is new, create the record properly rather than picking something close. A near-match splits history and can split a 1099.
- 2
Check the bill date and the due date.
The bill date drives which period the expense lands in; the due date drives aging and payment scheduling. They are different fields for a reason.
- 3
Code the lines.
Split across accounts where the bill genuinely covers different things, and add class, location, or project dimensions as your policy requires.
- 4
Confirm the total against the document.
Line totals plus tax and freight must equal the document total. A bill that does not foot is a bill that was misread.
- 5
Attach the source document if it is not already attached.
- 6
Submit it.
Depending on approval policy it either posts or enters the Approvals queue.
Duplicate bills
Duplicate detection matches on vendor, invoice number, and amount. A suspected duplicate is flagged rather than blocked, because vendors do occasionally reuse invoice numbers.
The usual causes:
- The bill was both emailed to intake and entered by hand.
- A vendor re-sent a statement listing invoices you already have.
- A reminder for an unpaid bill was forwarded as though it were new.
- Two people forwarded the same email.
Common questions
The expense belongs to the periods that consumed the service, not the period the invoice arrived. Code it to a prepaid asset and amortize it, or accrue it across the periods — a recurring journal is the tidy way to do this.
See alsoRecurring journal entries
If it is material, that is what accruals are for — you should have accrued the expected cost at close. If it is not material, record it in the current open period and note it. Do not reopen a closed period for an immaterial late bill.
See alsoPeriod locks and closing the booksRunning a monthly close
Yes. Record it in the vendor's currency; it is translated at the applicable rate for reporting, and the difference between the rate at bill date and at payment date is recognized as an exchange gain or loss.
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