Backbone MRP

Factory control & optimization platform

Vendor Bills

A vendor bill is what your vendor charges you — the mirror of an invoice you send a customer. Bills are raised against what you received and can be exported to QuickBooks as accounts payable.

Two different numbers

Every bill carries two, and keeping them apart matters:

  • Bill # is yours. It is inherited from the receiver the bill was raised from, so a bill and the delivery it pays for share an identifier and can be matched at a glance.
  • Vendor Bill # is theirs — the number on the vendor's invoice, transcribed off their paperwork. It is what a vendor chasing payment will quote at you, and what you reconcile a statement against.
Search knows the difference. The Vendor Bills tab of the Search window offers both, because you arrive holding one or the other and neither can be guessed from the other.

Exporting to QuickBooks

Bills export to QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop as accounts payable. Right-click one or more bills in the Open Bills list and choose the integration you use.

How a bill posts to your chart of accounts is a company-wide setting: lines can go straight to an account as expenses, or against QuickBooks items, depending on how your books are organized.

Re-exporting updates rather than duplicates. A bill QuickBooks already holds is updated in place when you export it again, so correcting an amount and re-sending does not leave you owing it twice.
Five free bill exports. Without the paid QuickBooks integration a company may export five bills. Re-exporting a bill QuickBooks already has is an update and does not count against them. This allowance is separate from the five free invoice exports.

Reading a bill back

Sync bill(s) from QB Online reads a bill back from QuickBooks and updates what it says is still owed. A bill settled in QuickBooks is marked paid here and drops off the Open Bills list.

A bill your company never exported is left alone, so syncing a whole list is safe.

QuickBooks integrations →

Vendor bills are not printed

There is no vendor bill form. The document that matters is the vendor's own invoice; record its number on the bill rather than generating one of your own.