Record what you owe a supplier

Bills are the purchase side of invoices: what you owe rather than what you are owed. A new bill starts as a draft and is not yet a payable — it has to be submitted and approved before any payment can be applied to it, and if no approval policy covers the amount, submitting approves it immediately. An approved bill is locked from editing; reject it back to draft to change it. Payments are made to the SUPPLIER rather than to one bill, so a single payment can settle several bills at once, and each bill shows only its own share.

Bills are the purchase side of invoices: what you owe rather than what you are owed.

How purchasing fits together {#chain}

Purchase order → Delivery → Bill → Approval → Payment

Each step is a separate document with its own permission, and each is optional. A bill can be entered directly with nothing behind it — a utility bill has no purchase order and never will.

What the chain buys you when you do use it is three-way matching: the bill is checked against what you ordered and what actually turned up, before anybody approves it.

Record a bill {#record}

Purchases → Bills → New. A bill starts as a draft, and a draft is not a payable — it has to be submitted and approved before any payment can be applied to it. If no approval policy covers the amount, submitting approves it immediately.

Totals are always recalculated from the lines rather than trusted from the form.

Three-way matching {#matching}

Where a bill’s lines came from a purchase order, Gridbind compares three documents: what was ordered, what was received, and what you are being billed.

• Matched — all three agree, within the tolerances set for your organisation.
• Variance — they do not, and the bill names which line and why: billed more than was received, more than was ordered, or at a price above the ordered price.
• Unmatched — nothing has been received against the order yet.
• Not required — no purchase order line anywhere on the bill, which is a perfectly ordinary state.

A variance flags a bill; it never blocks it. Paying a supplier who shipped nine of ten and invoiced for ten may be exactly the right call — but it should be a decision somebody made, not something nobody noticed.

A bill cannot be edited {#locked}

An approved bill is locked. A bill authorised at one amount must not quietly become a bill for another. Reject it back to draft to change it.

A bill with a payment recorded against it cannot be cancelled — cancel the payment first.

Bills in another currency {#currency}

A bill is held in the currency it was charged in, with an exchange rate converting it to your own for reporting. The document amounts are never restated: you owe the supplier what they invoiced, and a bill for 220.00 USD stays a bill for 220.00 USD.

The rate is fixed when the bill is created and does not move afterwards. The bill shows the rate used and what it converts to, so the figure in your reports can always be traced back.