Overview
Accounts Payable is the amount owed by your Organization to an individual or business that supplies goods or services. The Vendor and Bill entities are part of the accounts payable workflow.
Before you begin to pay your Bills you need to:
Let's get to know the entities that are part of the accounts payable workflow:
Vendor
A Vendor is an individual or company that sells goods or services to the Organization. This entity holds the details of your Vendors.
A Vendor's Bank Account contains the details of the bank account that sends payments to the Organization.
Bill
A Bill represents an amount owed for goods or services purchased from a Vendor. This entity holds the details of your Bills. Optionally, you can attach an image of the Bill or related documents using Upload Attachment.
Let's take a look at the entities that are involved when paying a Bill and storing this data in Bill.com.
| Recurring Bill |
A Bill that needs to be created periodically for the goods/services purchased from a Vendor is considered a Recurring Bill. Use this entity as a template to generate new bills in specified intervals over a specified time period. For example, if your Organization needs fifty notebooks delivered every month from a specific Vendor, you can create a Recurring Bill so that the Bill is automatically generated every month. |
| Vendor Credit | Vendor discounts or deductions to the amount owed by the Organization are recorded in the Vendor Credit entity. |
| Bill Credit | Once the Vendor Credit is applied on a Bill, a Bill Credit entity is generated and it stores the information related to the Bill and the Vendor Credit. |
| Record AP Payment | If the Vendor is not within Bill.com's Network or if you paid the Vendor outside of Bill.com, you can record the payment using the Record Accounts Payables (AP) Payments entity. |
| Pay Bills |
If the Vendor is in Bill.com's Network, you can directly pay the Vendor using the Pay Bills entity. Note: By default, the payment is made via check. But, if the vendor is set up for ePayment, the payment is sent via Automated Clearing House (ACH). |
| Sent Pay | You can pay multiple Bills using Pay Bills or you can record multiple Bill payments to the same Vendor using the Record AP Payment entity. Once the payment is recorded a Sent Pay entity is generated. It stores the details of the payment that was made to a Vendor, such as the Bills that were paid and the Vendor Credits that were applied on the Bills. |
| Bill Pay |
For each Bill that is paid using the Record AP Payment or Pay Bills entity, the Bill Pay object is generated. It is different from the Sent Pay entity because it stores the details of a Bill that is paid and the Vendor Credit applied on the respective Bill. Note: This entity is generated only if the entire Bill or part of the Bill was paid using money. |
| Void AP Payment | This entity attempts to void a Bill payment that has already started processing. |
| Cancel AP Payment | You can attempt to cancel a Bill payment using this entity. If the payment has started processing and you can not cancel the payment, you need to use Void AP Payment. |
| Get AP Summary | This gives you an overview of the Bills that are overdue, the number of total Bills that need to be approved, the total number of approvals, and the payments that were sent to the Vendors. |
| Get Disbursement Data | This entity hold the data on how a payment is made once a Bill is paid via Bill.com using Pay Bills. Payments can be made via check, ePayment via Automated Clearing House (ACH), ePayment to Large Billers, or via PayPal. |
| Get Check Image Data | Provides a URL to download the image of the check that was sent to the Vendor once the payment is disbursed. |
What's next
- Want to know how your account receivables are handled within Bill.com? See Accounts Receivable.
- To learn how users are authenticated before logging in to your Organization on Bill.com, see Authentication.
- You can make sure your payments are reviewed and approved before the payment goes out to the Vendor using the Approval workflow. See Approve Payments.