Help: How do I manually mark an expense/bill as paid?

I'm brand new to QB, practicing entering my professional expenses (using the vendor category) for this calendar year in anticipation of using QB next year for a private psychology practice. I've been able to enter the bills but cannot figure out how to manually document that they've already been paid. Help would be appreciated and thank you in advance.

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Help: How do I manually mark an expense/bill as paid?

Congratulations on your new QuickBooks Online account, JRR430. Let's get these bills paid.

Manually paying bills in QuickBooks Online is quick and easy. We can mark them as paid through the Pay bills section, here's how:

1. Click + New in the left panel and choose Pay Bills .
   
2. Select the bills you wanted to pay.
3. Hit Save and close .
   
   

For more details about paying bills in QuickBooks Online, we can scan through the following articles below. We can find other ways how to record payment bills as well as a link to differentiate between bills, checks, and expenses. Also, I'll be adding a write-up about paying bills online:

This should keep you moving today, JRR430. Don't hesitate to let me know if I can be of additional assistance while working in QuickBooks or need more help with paying bills. I'm always here to keep helping. Have a good one!

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Help: How do I manually mark an expense/bill as paid?

You can't just mark a bill as paid because that isn't enough information to properly record the bill payment in double-entry accounting. If you record a bill and then pay it, you are creating transactions that will impact your financial statements in future years. If this is not a legitimate business yet, but will be in the future, you don't want to do that. If you were using QB Desktop (a much better product IMO), you could create a practice company file and play around with it all you want since QB Desktop allows you to set up as many companies as you want. QB Online doesn't allow you to create multiple companies under one subscription.

However, if these are legitimate business expenses that you have paid personally, then you can pay the bills using a bank clearing account (if you don't have one, set one up). Then, create a journal entry and debit the bank clearing account and credit owner equity. If you want to just record this as an FYI, that is not really what QB is intended to do.

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Help: How do I manually mark an expense/bill as paid?

This is helpful but my issue is that both with the QB provided practice company examples and a template file provided to me by my accountant based on my past expenses to get started, I've not yet seen this + New button anywhere. I'm sure it is probably human error. For what it's worth, I have Desktop Pro Plus 2022 online subscription. The transactions I'm entering are from earlier 2022, before getting QB.

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Help: How do I manually mark an expense/bill as paid?

Let me clarify some details about marking the bill as paid, JRR430.

I n QuickBooks Desktop, you can go to the Pay Bills window to settle your payables. To locate the bills you want to pay, select the Show all bills option on the Pay Bills window, then scroll up or down to find the bill. You can run the Transactions List by Vendors report to check if you've already paid the bill. Here's how:

1. Go to the Reports menu.
2. Select Vendors & Payables , then Transaction List by Vendor .
3. Select Customize Report , then Billing Status from the Column section.
4. Select OK .

Then, you can now pay the bills. I've provided the steps below for you to follow:

1. Go to the Vendors menu, then select Pay Bills .
2. Select the correct accounts payable account from the dropdown.
3. Select the checkboxes of the bills you want to pay from the table.
   Note : To unmark or mark all the bills in the list, select Clear Selections or Select All Bills .
4. Set any discount or credit that you want to apply to the bills.
   • Discount - Select this if your vendor gave you a discount for this transaction.
   • Credit - Select this if you received a credit from your vendor, and used it to reduce your total bill amount.
5. Enter the date you paid the bill.
6. Select the payment method:
   • Check - Select the Assign check number if you plan to manually write the check. Select To be Printed to print the check or add it to the list of checks to print.
   • Credit Card - You can use credit cards to pay bills, then print a payment stub.
   • Online Bill Payment - You can directly pay your vendor bills in QuickBooks. It also records your payment automatically so your reports are accurate.
   • Online Bank Payment - The payment processor will print and mail a check to the employee. You can select Include reference number if you want the bill or credit reference number to be sent along with your name and account number.
   • Cash, Debit or ATM card, Paypal, or EFT - You can select Check , then Assign check number even when you’re not paying with an actual check. Enter the type of payment in the check number field or leave it blank.
7. Select Pay Selected Bills .
8. Select Done , or select Pay More Bills if you have other bills you need to pay.

Please know when you pay the bill, you don't have to write a check. If you do, the bill remains open and unpaid which leads to inaccurate financial reports. In addition, QuickBooks Desktop lets you add and match bank transactions in according to the modes you used. Learn how QuickBooks handles them by going through this article for your reference: Add And Match Bank Feed Transactions In QuickBooks Desktop.

Anything else that you need help with? Anyway, just let us know and we are sure ready to help you all the time.

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Help: How do I manually mark an expense/bill as paid?

Your original post says you're using QB Online so that's where the confusion is.

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Help: How do I manually mark an expense/bill as paid?

Thanks for the response and the tips.

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Help: How do I manually mark an expense/bill as paid?

Hello. So I have some questions on this topic as well. When I receive a vender statement I go in and select every invoice(bill) to match & pay the vender statement whether it be printing a check or ach I do this process the same. I have this recurring issue that quickbooks online seems to try to manipulate my selections on its own after the fact and then the next month I find the selections are different than what I originally showed on the bills & applied payments report?! I am wondering if after I make all my selections, match the stmt & print the check if I can go in to settings a lock it so QB cannot make indirect or automatic changes? I had it happen when I paid an Oct22 stmt and it actually selected items from 2021! The only info I could get from the audit trail is that another use "indirectly edited the payment" I know she would not have selected 2021 invoices though so its not making sense to me and I am hoping someone out there has some insight to what QBO is doing or if there is some sort of setting I can turn off. Any input is appreciated!

Also when I need a "remittance" report for my vendor I have been utilizing hte bills & Applied Payments report; is there a better report for this purpose?