Video: Entering your bills

In this video, watch how Hannah enters her bill so she knows exactly what she needs to pay other people.

Video script

Small business owner Hannah recently hired Wally the Web designer to give her magic shop’s web site a major overhaul. She loves it! After she’s done admiring her beautiful site, Hannah checks her email and sees that Wally has sent her an invoice for the work.

Before she sends Wally a check, Hannah needs to put the info in this invoice into QuickBooks. It’s a knee-jerk thing—on her QuickBooks home page, Hannah puts her mouse on Pay Bills. But that’s NOT the best place to start!

Hannah remembers that first, she’s got to enter this bill. On the Enter Bills window, she chooses Wally’s name in the Vendor list. Because she’s worked with Wally before, he’s already in her QuickBooks vendor list.

Hannah fills out the info on the slip at the top of the Bill window—the date she got the bill, the invoice number, the amount due, the date due, the terms of the bill. Then she fills out the bottom of the window, entering the items from the invoice in the Items table. Hannah saves the bill and closes the Enter Bills window.

Wally has offered Hannah a 5% discount if she pays her bill in full within 5 days of receiving it. Her cash flow is fine, and she wants that discount! So she goes back to her QuickBooks home page and clicks Pay Bills.

This time it’s the right choice. Because she’s entered Wally’s invoice info as a bill, now she can find it and choose it.
In the Pay Bills window, Hannah chooses Wally’s bill, to pay Wally by check, to print this check, and to use her Checking Account to pay this bill.

Hannah clicks the Discount Info button. Because Hannah entered Wally’s payment terms—5% Net 5—in the Enter Bills Window, QuickBooks knows how much to discount her bill.

Hannah clicks OK on the Discount pane. Then she clicks OK on the Pay Bills window.

The Pay Bills window disappears, and QuickBooks records this bill as paid. Cool!

All that’s left for Hannah to do is to print out the check QuickBooks has already written for her, stick it in an envelope, and drop it in the mail.


About Shelly King

Shelly King works for Intuit as a member of the QuickBooks for Mac team. She’s the Managing Editor for Little Square and its main contributor. Shelly grew up in the South until 1994 when the Internet called her to Silicon Valley. She’s done a lot on the web ever since. Little Square was her idea. Yep, it’s all her fault. See all of Shelly's articles

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