Vendor bills — what you owe before you pay it

A vendor bill is an invoice you have received but not yet paid: the plumber’s invoice for last week’s repair, the insurer’s annual premium, your accountant’s fee. Habitia keeps these in a register on the Payments page so you always know what is owed, to whom, and how late it is, and so paying one is a single step that records the expense correctly.

Why a bill posts nothing

Habitia keeps your books on a cash basis: an expense counts on the day you pay it. Entering a bill therefore changes nothing in the general ledger, the owner’s balance, the Financial report or the year-end worksheets. It is a note to yourself, with a due date.

When you pay the bill, Habitia records an ordinary expense payment, the same one you would have entered on the Payments page by hand, and links it to the bill. That payment is what reaches the books (expense and bank), the owner’s statement when the property is managed, the work order’s cost, and the 1099 and Hacienda worksheets.

The 2100 Accounts Payable account in the chart of accounts stays unused by bills. It is reserved for a future accrual option, where an expense would be recognised when the invoice arrives instead of when it is paid.

Entering a bill

On Payments, the Vendor bills card sits above the summary cards. Click Enter bill and fill in:

Vendor (required) and Category, the same expense categories the Payments page uses.
Amount, Bill date and, optionally, a Due date. The due date drives the aging below.
Invoice #: the vendor’s own number. Entering the same number twice for the same vendor is refused, which catches a bill filed twice.
Property, or No property for business overhead such as software or professional fees.
Bill this to the owner: for properties whose expense policy is billable only, this marks the eventual payment as one the owner bears.

A bill is the gross amount the vendor asked for. It carries no tax fields of any kind: Habitia does not know, and does not try to guess, what your jurisdiction requires you to deduct.

Dates, invoice number and description can be edited at any time. The amount, category and property are locked once a payment has been recorded against the bill; void it and enter it again if those were wrong.

Bills on a work order

A bill for a repair job is best entered from the work order itself: its Invoices tab has Record invoice, which creates the same bill already linked to the job (and, from an accepted estimate, Create invoice prefills vendor and amount). Paying it there or here is the same action; the payment shows under the bill on the work order and in this card. See Logging a work order.

What is overdue

The card shows the open total, the overdue total and how much sits in each aging bucket: Current (not yet due, or no due date), 1–30 days, 31–60 days, 61–90 days and Over 90 days past the due date. Each unpaid row carries its bucket next to the due date. The filter at the top right switches between unpaid bills (the default), paid, voided and all.

Paying a bill

Click Pay on a row. The amount defaults to what is still owed; enter less for a partial payment. Choose the payment date, the method and the check or reference number, then Record payment. Habitia:

Records an expense payment for that amount, dated as you said, with the bill’s vendor, category, property, work order and description, tagged vendor_bill.
Posts its journal entry (expense against the bank, or against the trust bank where trust accounting routes it), exactly as a payment entered by hand would.
Marks the bill Partial or Paid and shows the remaining balance.

If you held part of the payment back from the vendor and remitted it elsewhere, type that figure in Amount deducted from this payment. It is optional, it is your number, and Habitia never calculates, defaults or pro-rates it; it is stored on that payment as a fact, the same way it is for any expense payment, and shows up on the year-end worksheets as what you actually did.

A payment can never exceed what is still owed on the bill. The same applies if you record an expense on the Payments page and link it to a bill there, or edit a linked payment’s amount later.

If you delete a payment that was made against a bill, the bill re-opens by that amount and the payment’s journal entry is voided, as with any deleted payment. Closed periods apply as usual: a bill payment dated inside a closed period is refused.

Voiding a bill

A bill with no payments against it can be voided with a reason, for example because it was entered twice or the vendor withdrew it. A bill that has been partly or fully paid cannot be voided; delete or refund its payments first.

For the owner and the accountant

Owner statements and balances see only the payments, on their payment dates. An unpaid bill never appears on a statement.
The 1099 and Hacienda worksheets count what was actually paid in the year, as for every other expense payment. See Hacienda year-end worksheet.
The open-bills register is what an accountant would call a sub-ledger for payables under a cash basis: useful for cash planning, not part of the trial balance.