Accounts payable

The Accounts Payable module tracks what your organization owes its suppliers. You enter vendor bills by hand or from purchase orders, approve them to post them to the general ledger, plan when to pay them, record payments and follow what is overdue.

Before you begin

• Accounts Payable needs the Purchasing and Accounting modules. Suppliers come from Purchasing.
• Your chart of accounts needs accounts used for Payables, Bank and Tax recoverable, plus Inventory and Other expenses for default line accounts. The starting chart has them. See account roles.
• Bills in another currency need an exchange rate on or before the bill date.
• Open the module from Payables in the main menu (/m/payables). The command palette also has Open payables, New bill and Payment schedule.

The page has four tabs: Bills, Payments, Schedule and Aging.

Bill lifecycle

Status	Meaning
Draft	Being entered. Can be edited and deleted. Not in the books.
Approved	Posted to the books and final. Only its Pay on date (and notes) can change. Can be paid.

An approved bill also has a payment status, shown in the Payment column:

Payment status	Meaning
Unpaid	Nothing paid yet, not past its due date.
Partially paid	Part paid, not past its due date.
Overdue	Something is left to pay after the due date.
Paid	Nothing is left to pay.

Enter a bill by hand

1. On the Bills tab, select New bill.

2. Fill in the bill:

   Field	Notes
   Supplier	Required. Cannot be changed later.
   Supplier's invoice number	The supplier's own number. The same number twice for a supplier is refused, which protects you from entering a bill twice.
   Currency	Defaults to the supplier's currency.
   Bill date	The date on the supplier's invoice.
   Due date	Defaults to the bill date plus the supplier's payment terms. Must be on or after the bill date.
   Pay on	Optional day you plan to pay.
   Notes	Optional.

3. Save. The bill opens as a draft, numbered BILL-00001, BILL-00002…

4. Select Edit lines, then Add a product for catalog products or Add a line for a text line. For each line, set the Description, the Account to charge, the Qty and the Unit price.

   • The unit price defaults to the supplier's price for the product, otherwise its purchase cost.
   • Leave Account empty to use the Inventory account for stocked products and Other expenses for everything else.

5. Save the lines. Taxes are calculated from the Taxes module for the supplier's address, and the bill shows its Subtotal, each tax and the Total.

A vendor bill, with the account each line is charged to.

Bill a purchase order

When goods arrive against a purchase order, you can bill exactly what was received.

1. Open the order in Purchasing (see Purchase orders). The order must have been sent.
2. In the Bills card, select Create a bill.

Modulix creates a draft bill for the quantities received and not billed yet, at the order's prices, and links it to the Purchase order. The order's Bills card lists every bill made from it. If nothing received is left to bill, you are told so.

Approve a bill

Approving a bill posts it to the books. Check the lines and totals first: an approved bill cannot be changed.

1. Open the draft bill and select Approve.
2. Confirm. The bill must have at least one line.

Modulix posts an entry dated on the bill date:

• each line's account is debited with its amount,
• recoverable taxes are debited to Tax recoverable,
• the supplier's Payables balance is credited with the total.

Bills in another currency are converted at the bill date's exchange rate, with any rounding difference on the Rounding account. The bill's In the books card links to the entry.

note

Bill approval is a single step controlled by the payables.approve permission. Give it only to the people who should commit the organization to paying.

Schedule payments

Each approved bill can carry a Pay on day, the day you plan to pay it. By default it is the due date.

1. Open an approved, unpaid bill and select Pay on.
2. Pick the day and confirm. Leave it empty to go back to the due date.

The Schedule tab lists unpaid approved bills grouped by the day they are to be paid, overdue days first, with a total for each day. Use Up to to see everything to pay up to a date, for example the end of next week.

The payment schedule: what to pay, and when.

Record supplier payments

Supplier payments are numbered PAY-00001, PAY-00002… and posted to the books as soon as they are saved: the supplier's Payables balance is debited and the Bank account credited.

Pay one bill

1. Open an approved bill and select Record a payment.
2. Check the Amount (by default, the balance due), the Date (by default, today), the Method and an optional Reference.
3. Select Record a payment.

Pay several bills at once

1. On the Payments tab, select New payment.
2. Fill in the Supplier, Date, Amount, Currency, Method (Bank transfer, Card, Cash, Check, Direct debit or Other), Reference and Notes.
3. Tick Apply it to the bills due first to apply the payment automatically to the supplier's oldest-due bills, or leave it unticked and apply it yourself.
4. Save.

To choose the bills yourself, open the payment and select Apply to bills. Enter the Amount applied to each open bill. A payment can only be applied to approved bills of the same supplier and currency, each up to its balance. What is not applied stays Unapplied on the payment.

Change or delete a payment

• Changing a payment's amount, date, supplier or currency reverses its entry and posts it again.
• Deleting a payment reverses its entry and gives its bills their balance back.

tip

If you use Banking, you do not have to record supplier payments by hand. When the payment appears on your bank statement, match the line and choose Settle next to the bill: Modulix records the payment from that bank account and matches it in one step.

Aging

The Aging tab shows what is owed As of a day, by supplier, in buckets of days past the due date: 0–30 (including amounts not due yet), 31–60, 61–90 and 90+, with a Total per supplier and Totals per currency.

Accounts payable aging.

Bills list

The Bills tab lists every bill with its number, supplier, supplier's invoice number, status, bill date, due date, total, balance due and payment status. Filter by Status or Payment, search, and save views. The Pay on and Purchase order columns are hidden by default.

Suppliers that have bills or payments, and accounts used on bill lines, cannot be deleted.

Permissions

Permission	What it allows	Granted by default to
payables.read	View bills, supplier payments, the schedule and aging	Administrators
payables.write	Enter bills, set when to pay them, record and apply supplier payments	Administrators
payables.delete	Delete draft bills and supplier payments	Administrators
payables.approve	Approve bills (post them to the books)	Administrators

Troubleshooting

• "Already entered as BILL-…": the supplier's invoice number is already on another bill of this supplier. Open that bill instead of entering it again.
• Approve fails with a period message: the bill date is in a closed period. Reopen the period in Accounting or ask the supplier for the correct date.
• A bill does not appear when applying a payment: only approved bills of the same supplier and currency with a balance left are offered.