#Bills & Payments

A bill records money your organization owes to a vendor. When you pay it, record the payment on the bill's profile page, and the bill shows what is still outstanding.

#Before you start

• At least one account should exist for the accounts you'll assign to a bill's line items.
• You need the View permission for Bills (own records or all records) to see the list and open bills. You need the Create permission for Bills to create one.
• Recording a payment against a bill needs the Record payment permission for Bills & Payments and the Edit permission for that bill (own records or all records).
• There's no Edit or Delete control for bills on these screens — see Current limitations.

Team owners and admins always have access.

#The bills list

Open Finance > Bills & Payments. Columns: Date, Reference, Title/Name, Vendor, Status, Amount, Outstanding. Outstanding is what you still owe: the bill's amount less the payments recorded against it. Sorted newest-first by Date. Select a row to open the bill.

Amounts on the Finance screens follow your organization's number settings.

When your organization has business units, the list has a Business unit column, and the funnel icon opens a filter with Business unit: All business units, your main business only, or a unit with its sub-units. Without a choice, the list starts with the unit chosen in the header, and the card title names it. There's no other search or filter beyond the table's own search box, and no export buttons.

Select the create icon on the toolbar to start a new bill.

#Create a bill

1. Select the create icon from the Bills & Payments list.
2. Choose the Vendor.
3. Optionally set the Date and Due date.
4. Optionally enter a Reference.
5. Enter a Name/memo.
6. When your organization has business units, check the Business unit. It starts with the unit chosen in the header.
7. Add a line for each account this bill's cost is split across: choose an Account, and optionally a Memo, Qty, and Unit price — the line's Amount is calculated automatically from Qty × Unit price, though you can also type over it directly. The form starts with one blank line; select Add another line for more, or the trash icon to remove one.
8. Optionally enter Description and notes.
9. Select Create bill.

Total amount is shown above the line items, calculated automatically from your lines' amounts — you can't edit it directly.

What happens when you save. OCTO Ops creates the bill with status Active and a Balance equal to its Total, and posts one ledger entry crediting Accounts Payable for the bill's full Total. A line is only kept as its own ledger entry when it's linked to a product — since a bill's line editor asks for an account rather than a product, the individual account, memo, and amount you enter on each line generally are not saved as separate ledger entries; only the single Accounts Payable credit for the total appears afterwards. The bill is numbered automatically with the next number after your highest bill; bills and the payables recorded against container inwards have their own number series, separate from invoices and receipts. With business units, a bill of a unit that is, or sits under, a separate legal entity is numbered in that entity's own sequence. A bill raised from a container inward's Payables starts with the inward's business unit — see Inwards.

#View a bill

Open a bill from the list to see its profile page: reference and status, Name, Description, Vendor, Date, Due date, Total and Outstanding. With business units, the profile also shows the Business unit, with its legal entity in brackets when that is another unit. A Ledger entries table (Account name, Memo, Debit, Credit) appears when the bill has ledger entries. A Payments card lists the payments recorded against the bill: Date, Method, Paid from, Reference and Amount, or "No payments have been recorded against this bill." when there are none. A payment that was reversed shows "Reversed on date" with the reason under its reference, and its amount struck through: it no longer counts as paid. Today this happens only on a bill from a fuel station whose payment the station rejected — see Fuel bills.

A bill raised from a fuel station's invoice is voided when the station voids that invoice: its profile shows a Void badge and a banner "Voided on date: reason", its ledger entries are reversed (the reversing entries carry the station's reason), it shows nothing Outstanding, and Record payment is no longer offered; a payment on it is refused with "This bill is void." See Fuel bills. Other bills cannot be voided in this version.

There's no Edit control on this page, and printing isn't available for a bill in this version.

#Record a payment

1. Open the bill.
2. Select Record payment under the bill's details. It's shown when you hold the Record payment permission and the bill still has something outstanding.
3. Choose the account the payment was made from under Paid from: one of your bank or cash accounts.
4. Check the Amount. It starts with the bill's outstanding amount; change it for a part payment.
5. Optionally set the Date. Left empty, it's today.
6. Choose the Method: Bank transfer, Cheque, Cash, Card or Other.
7. Optionally enter a Reference, such as the cheque or transfer number.
8. Select Record payment.

What happens when you save. OCTO Ops records a Bill payment that debits the payable account the bill itself was credited to (Accounts Payable, or the payable your Fuel settings name for a fuel station's bill) and credits the account you paid from, and takes the amount off the bill's Outstanding amount. Part payments add up, and the bill's payment state becomes part paid, then paid. A payment larger than what is outstanding, or of zero, is refused and nothing is saved. Selecting Record payment twice, or a retry after a dropped connection, records the payment once; a retry with a changed amount, account, method, reference or date is refused ("This request was already made with different details. Check whether it was recorded before you try again."), so check the bill's payments before recording it again. Before saving, OCTO Ops checks that you hold the Edit permission for this bill.

On success, a toast reads "The payment has been recorded.", the dialog closes and the Payments card and Outstanding amount update.

#Errors you may see

#Current limitations

• If someone else is saving a bill (or a payable on an inward) at the same moment, your save can briefly be refused with the pop-up "Another document in this series is being numbered right now. Try again in a moment." Nothing is saved, and saving again a moment later works.

• The account lines you enter when creating a bill generally aren't kept as separate ledger entries — only a single entry for the bill's Total, posted against Accounts Payable, is saved. See What happens when you save above.

• There's no way to edit or delete a bill from this screen. A bill raised by another module (a fuel station's invoice you accepted) cannot be edited at all: "This bill was raised by another module and cannot be edited here."

• No print control is available for a bill.

• A new bill always starts with status Active — the Open, Paid, Refunding, and Refunded statuses aren't assigned automatically.

• Settings > Module settings > Finance's currency and tax configuration don't affect bills in this version — see Module settings.

• Because Invoices, Bills & Payments, Journals, and Credit Notes share how they're stored behind the scenes, a permission for one of these submodules can sometimes let you open a record that actually belongs to a different one, if you know or guess its link — see Finance Current limitations.