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Bills

Bills track what you owe vendors from capture through payment. Enter them manually, forward them by email, or extract them with AI — then move each bill to Paid while DayZero posts the AP journal entries that keep aging accurate.

Key capabilities

  • Multiple entry paths: Create Bill, Bulk Upload (AI extraction or CSV import), Upload Expense, the Bill Inbox, vendor bill request links, or auto-created from a purchase order/transfer
  • Seven-state lifecycle (Draft, Pending Approval, Forecasted, Received, Partially Paid, Paid, Canceled) with actions that depend on the state
  • One-time and recurring bill types, with recurring templates that auto-generate future bills
  • Partial payments that track the amount paid and a live remaining balance, flipping status to Partially Paid then Paid
  • Vendor credits applied against a bill to reduce the net balance due alongside cash payments
  • AP Aging tab bucketed by vendor (Current, 1-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91+ days past due), plus Total Due and Overdue cards
  • Auto-match of bank transactions to bills with confidence scoring, Match Payment to Bills to split one payment across several, and Payment Initiated tracking for payments sent from your bank
  • Hold Payment with a reason: a held bill refuses payment until released, shows under the On hold filter, and is left out of the Pay plan
  • Pay plan tab: what to pay first, sized to the cash in your bank; Defer shifts a bill's outflow in the cash forecast without changing its due date
  • Compare Contract stamps a bill with a contract-match status (Contract Matched, Over Contract, Under Contract, Needs Review, No Contract) that feeds AP approval
  • Three-way match (PO ↔ receipt ↔ invoice) with quantity/price variance flags on PO-sourced bills
  • Document attachments (PDF/image) kept on the bill for the audit trail, previewable inline in a widened bill panel so a bill can be reviewed and approved without downloading it
  • Upcoming bills: a forecast of payments you know are coming (contractors, retainers), one-off or repeating weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, or quarterly (weekly and every-2-weeks on a chosen weekday) — estimates only, kept out of AP totals and the ledger until you push one to a draft bill
  • Optional payment-method label (Wire Transfer, ACH, Check, Credit Card) for reporting; filters for status, vendor, bill number, due date, payment method, and journal entry; Export to CSV
  • Comments on each bill, plus Generate Journal Entry or Attach Journal Entry when a posted bill has none
  • Optional AP approval — a per-business switch (off by default) that holds a bill in Pending Approval until it's signed off

How it works

A bill starts as a draft. With the approval workflow off, Approve Draft moves it to Forecasted (expected, not yet in the ledger) and Mark Received posts it to AP; bills created from the Bill Inbox post as Received right away. With approval on, Send for Approval holds the bill in Pending Approval and it posts to Received only once approved. Either way it is then paid down by one or more transactions until the balance is zero.

flowchart TD
  create["Create (manual / AI / CSV / PO)"] --> draft["Draft"]
  draft -->|"Approval off: Approve Draft"| fc["Forecasted"]
  fc -->|"Mark Received"| received["Received (posts to AP)"]
  draft -->|"Approval on: Send for Approval"| pending["Pending Approval (not in ledger)"]
  pending -->|"approved"| received
  pending -->|"rejected"| canceled["Canceled"]
  received --> partial["Partially Paid"]
  partial --> paid["Paid"]
  received --> paid

How to use it

  1. Open Bills in the Accounts Payable workspace. The All Bills, Pay plan, Upcoming, and AP Aging tabs sit at the top.
  2. Click Create Bill to enter one manually, Bulk Upload for files or a CSV, or use the Bill Inbox to convert an emailed draft.
  3. Pick the vendor, enter the amount, expense account (ledger), bill number, and dates (invoice and due).
  4. Open the bill. A draft shows Approve Draft (or Send for Approval when approval is on); a Forecasted bill shows Mark Received, which posts the journal entry and adds the bill to AP aging.
  5. To pay, click Record Payment and choose the matching bank transaction and amount (partial amounts are allowed), or use Auto-match to accept suggested links.
  6. Narrow the list with the status, vendor, bill number, due date, payment method, and On hold filters, or click the Total Due and Overdue cards.
  7. Use the Pay plan tab before a pay run to see what to pay first, and the AP Aging tab regularly to catch overdue balances before late fees hit.
  8. Click a bill's attachment to preview the document beside its details; download and open-in-new-tab buttons are still there.
  9. Use the Upcoming tab to record bills you expect but haven't received. Push to bill turns one into a draft when the real invoice arrives.

Pro tips

  • Recording a payment requires a real bank transaction — DayZero links the bill to that transaction's journal entry rather than inventing cash movement, so reconcile your bank feed first.
  • Removing a payment only un-links the transaction; it never deletes the bank transaction, and the bill's status recalculates back to Received or Partially Paid.
  • Use Hold Payment for a do-not-pay instruction (disputes, missing paperwork); the reason is required. It works on any bill that is not Paid or Canceled. Payments are refused until you Release Hold.
  • Use Auto-match to find likely payments, then Accept High-Confidence (85% and above) instead of matching by hand.
  • Select several bills and click Match Payment to Bills to split one bank payment across them; the total is checked against the transaction's unallocated balance first, so an over-allocation fails cleanly.
  • The payment-method label is informational only — it never touches the ledger, so it stays editable even after a bill is paid.
  • Bills that come from a purchase order carry a three-way match status; Qty variance, Price variance, or Qty + price variance means "ordered ≠ received ≠ billed" and is worth investigating before paying.
  • When a PO-linked bill is received with a total that differs from the PO, landed COGS for that PO's items is automatically trued up to the billed actuals — the Inventory → Landed COGS tab tags those snapshots Billed actuals.
  • Keep vendor contracts current — only a Contract Matched bill can auto-approve under AP approval.
  • Upcoming bills are estimates for cash forecasting. They never appear in AP totals, aged payables, or the balance sheet — pushing one to a bill creates a draft you still approve and mark received, which is what posts to the ledger.

In-depth guide

Lifecycle & balances

  • Cancel Bill — Draft, Pending Approval, or Forecasted bills. Delete — Draft, Pending Approval, and Forecasted bills delete directly; for posted bills it asks you to confirm and removes the journal entries and payment links.
  • Move to Draft — withdraws a Forecasted or Pending Approval bill, or reverses a Received bill with nothing paid or credited (not for PO-raised bills or payments in flight).
  • Payments — accepted only in Received or Partially Paid.
  • Remaining balance is the amount minus payments; balance due also subtracts applied vendor credits and is 0 for Paid or Canceled. A bill is Overdue when it is unpaid and past its due date.

Accounting impact (double-entry)

  • Mark received (or create as received with an expense account): Debit the chosen expense ledger, Credit Accounts Payable.
  • Record payment: Debit Accounts Payable, Credit Cash. When payments reach the bill amount, status flips to Paid.
  • Cancel: status moves to Canceled and any posted journal entries are reversed.

Journal entries are only created when the business has the ledger integration enabled.

AI bill capture (OCR / extraction)

  • Inputs — AI extraction accepts pasted text, PDFs, images, Excel, or a multi-bill CSV and returns draft bills for review before anything is created.
  • Auto-matching — fuzzy-matches vendor and expense ledger from extracted bill data; low-confidence matches stay in review.
  • Inbox flow — see AP Emails and AP Automation & Bill Capture. Upload Expense works the same way for expense receipts.

Payment matching

  • Scan — Auto-match surfaces likely links between unallocated outgoing bank transactions and open bills; the Matches button lists them.
  • Suggestions — each has a confidence score; Accept or Reject individually, or Accept High-Confidence for the strong ones.
  • Pay plan — the Pay plan tab ranks open bills by what to pay first (late, early-pay discount, due within 7 days), pre-selects what fits the cash in the bank, and marks the bills sent once you've paid them — see Payment Advisory. Bills on hold are left out.
  • Payment Initiated — mark a bill when you have sent payment from your bank; it clears when the bank transaction is linked (Undo Payment Initiated reverses it).

Related features & AP approval

  • Per-business toggle — approval is opt-in and off by default; switch it on from Approval Policies. Send for Approval (or creating the bill from the Bill Inbox) captures the expense account and amount and holds the bill in Pending Approval. A Forecasted bill can be routed with Submit for AP Approval. It posts its journal entry only when approved; rejection cancels it.
  • Routing — when approval is on and an approval policy is set up, the vendor's approval route, the bill's amount, and its contract-match status decide whether it auto-approves or goes to Operations or Advisor + Owner — see AP Approval Workflow.
  • Downstream — bills also feed AP aging, cash forecasting, and (when sourced from inventory) the PO/transfer three-way match and landed-COGS true-up from billed actuals.

Edge cases

  • A bill can exist without a vendor — useful for quick drafts, but contract matching and approval assignment need a vendor.
  • Bulk CSV import creates entries as Draft, Forecasted (when Approve Bills is ticked), or Received (when Create as Received is ticked, which requires a resolvable expense account per row).
  • Force-deleting a bill with payments removes the link records but not the underlying bank transactions.