Enhanced interface

Create a bill

Learn how to create a bill in Sage Intacct. After you create a bill, you can move it along the normal Accounts Payable workflow. The bill might require approval, after which you can select the bill for payment on the Pay bills page and create a payment request.

If you have many bills to enter, you might want to import bills instead, to save time.

Looking to simplify bill entry? Let AP Automation handle it for you by creating bills from vendor documents via email or uploads. Discover more about how bill automation can streamline your process.

Subscription	Accounts Payable
User type	Business
Permissions	Bills: List, View, Add

Enter header information

Go to Accounts Payable > All and select Add (circle) next to Bills.
Select Add.
Enter a date.

The GL posting date defaults from the Date field, but you can override this.
Select a Vendor.

The Pay to and Return to fields default to the contacts selected in the vendor record. You can override these values.
Optionally, select Populate from last bill to copy bill details from the most recently created bill for this vendor.

If you regularly receive similar bills from a vendor, this option can save time with data entry. Intacct copies the description, term, attachment, currency information, and line item entries from the prior bill. You can then edit the information as needed.
Enter a Bill number.

This is the vendor-assigned number provided on the bill. This number is unique to the bill and is frequently used to look up bill details.
Enter a Reference number.

This is a number such as a purchase order or account number that might be useful in searches or reports on this bill. This number shows on the GL Details report and prints on the check and vendor stubs.
Enter a Description.
Enter a Term.

Intacct calculates the due date for you if you selected a term for this bill, or if the term defaulted from either the vendor information record or the previous bill.
Optionally, enter a Recommended to pay on date.

If you set a Default bill payment date on the vendor record, Intacct calculates the default Recommended to pay on date for you, on all new bills for this vendor. You can override the calculated date or, if you did not set up a Default bill payment date for the vendor, enter a date during bill entry.

In Pay bills, you can use Advanced filters to filter by the Recommended to pay on date.

How is a default Recommended to pay on date calculated?

On the Payment information tab on the Vendor information page, you can determine how you want Intacct to calculate this date by setting the Default bill payment date. You can base the default off the Discount date, Bill date, or Due date, including an offset.

When you enter a bill for the vendor, Intacct fills in the Recommended to pay on date using the parameters you set for the Default bill payment date setting in the vendor record. These parameters define whether the date should be calculated based on the Bills date, Due date, or discount term, and can specify a number of days to use as an offset.

For example, say the vendor terms are set to 2/10 Net 30 and you set the Default bill payment date to Discount date. When you enter a new bill, Intacct sets the Recommended to pay on date to 10 days before the Due date, based on the Term. In another example, if the vendor terms are set to Net 45 and you want to be sure to pay the bill 3 days before it is due, you can set the Default bill payment date to Due date - 3 days.
Add an Attachment.

If you selected Populate from last bill to copy bill details, you might want to replace the old attachment with the latest bill.

Need help?

To permanently and safely store a digital version of a supporting document, in the dropdown next to Attachment, select an attachment. Or, select Add and upload your attachmentAn attachment is a group of one or more supporting documents, such as spreadsheets, scanned images, or word processor documents.. Learn more about who can add attachments.

You can drag and drop your files to add an attachment. To attach a document to multiple journal entries, see Bulk processing.
Enter a Due date.

If you selected a term for this bill, or if the term defaulted from either the vendor information record or the previous bill, Intacct calculates the due date for you.
Select the Payment priority for this bill.

This defaults to Normal. If you set a payment priority in the vendor information record, Intacct copies that value.

You can sort for high-priority bills to pay on the Pay bills page.
To prevent the bill from being selected for payment, select Place this bill on hold.

Release the bill for payment when you're ready to create a payment request.
If prompted for a Summary, make a selection from the dropdown list.

The Summary field appears when your company has configured the summary frequency for this transaction type to be user-defined. For all other summary frequencies, such daily or monthly, Intacct automatically creates the summary for you and adds the new transaction to the summary.

What's a summary?

Summaries are collections of the same type of transactions, grouped together for processing. The advantage of using a summary is that the transaction group posts to the GL as one line. From that one line, as needed, you can drill down to any of the individual transactions.

You can have Sage Intacct create, post, and close summaries automatically at a frequency that you specify by selecting a time interval. Or, you can create, post, and close summaries yourself.

When you first create a summary, it's open, and you can enter transactions. After you close a summary, you can't post transactions to it, which prevents posting transactions to the wrong period. To add or delete transactions from a closed summary, reopen it.

See AP summaries overview for more information.
(Multi-currency companies) Enter Currency and Exchange rate information in the Currency section.
1. Select the Transaction currency to use.
  If this is not your company's base currency, continue with the next two steps.
  Do you have a vendor who conducts transactions using a different currency? Set the Default currency in their Vendor information record to reflect their currency of choice. Then, when you create a bill, advance, or adjustment for the vendor, Intacct automatically sets the transaction currency to match their default currency setting.
2. Select an Exchange rate type such as Intacct daily rate or WSJ Published Rate.
  If you know the exchange rate for this transaction, or are contracted with the vendor on a set exchange rate, enter it in the Exchange rate field.
3. Enter or select a date in Exchange rate date.
  The default is the current date, but you can override this. For example, you might want to change it to the date the transaction was issued, or the date you intend to pay the transaction.
  If you override the Date field, the Exchange rate date updates automatically.

Enter line items

In the Entries section, you can add values directly to each line item, or select Show defaults to define default values to autofill each line item.

To set up a value as a default for each existing and new line item, select the dropdown beside the appropriate field and choose a value.

You can override any default value on any line item.

Learn more about setting default line items.

Are the line-item columns in the wrong order for you, or do you need to see different dimensions? If you have the right permissions, you can add, remove, and rearrange line-item fields to make bill entry more efficient for you and other users at your company.

Select an Account to receive the expense.

If your company is set up to use account labels, select an Account label instead.

Set a default account for this vendor by editing the Default expense account field on the Additional information tab of the vendor record.
If the vendor is set up for 1099 tracking and enabled for 1099 flag override, you can tag individual line items for 1099 treatment.
Enter the line item Amount, even if the amount is zero.

For multi-currency companies, enter the Transaction amount, which is the amount in the transaction currency. This calculates the Base amount of the line item in your company's base currency according to the exchange rate defined in the header.

Are you entering a negative line item as an inline credit?
(Companies enabled for allocations) Select a transaction Allocation template for the line item to distribute the bill amount across specified dimensions.

This selection overrides the allocation template in the Entries defaults section. Any default dimensions that you selected for those line items do not flow through to the transaction allocations table. Select Customize allocation above the table to set values. You can select Show defaults and enter a default for all the line items in your allocation table. Learn more about how to Allocate bills, invoices, or journal entries.
Use transaction allocations
1. Create a transaction allocation if one doesn’t already exist. This new transaction allocation appears in your list of allocations, and you can select it the next time you allocate a bill, an invoice, or a journal entry. Intacct automatically applies the distribution that you specified when you created this transaction allocation.
  For more information, see Edit or view transaction allocation definitions.
2. Select the line item and select the transaction allocation to use.
  After you select a transaction allocation, Intacct removes any dimension values selected for the line item; instead it populates the dimension values from the transaction allocation directly.
3. To change the dimensions for the line item, select the Show details tab, and select Customize allocation.
Even when a transaction allocation with a predetermined distribution of amounts is assigned to a line item, you can still override these amounts. You can also override aspects of the allocation at the line item level of the relevant transaction page (bills, invoices, or journal entries).

For more information about overriding allocations, see Apply a transaction allocation to a bill, invoice, or journal entry.
Override a transaction allocation

You can apply a transaction allocation either to individual lines of a transaction or to the entire transaction. If you apply it to the entire transaction, all the line item entries inherit the distribution of the allocation. However, you can override that allocation on a line-by-line basis.

When you change the allocated dimensions/values, the allocation will be re-set as “Custom,” as it now contains a specific allocation distribution unique to that line item. The unique allocated values are stored with your line item for audit trail purposes.

To override a transaction allocation:

Select the line item you want to override and select the Show details tab. The Allocation Splits detail area appears.

For example, say you have a default transaction allocation that distributes the cost over departments in the San Francisco location, in equal amounts. You can override the department distribution as needed, say to allocate $1,000 to Operations, $100 to Support, and $440 to Services.

If you change the amounts so that the total is different from what you entered in the transaction page, Intacct updates the total when you save and return to the transaction page.
Select an alternative AP account to override the default GL AP account.

Intacct populates the AP override account that you select here to every line item in this transaction.

To override the AP GL account for one line item, select the Show details tab for that line item and make changes there.
Type a Memo to appear on the check stub.

This memo does not appear on the check face. Learn more about printing extra information on checks and check stubs.
Select the Department or Location for the line item.

If you use additional dimensions, such as customer, employee, or item, and are assigning the expense to them, select the corresponding dimension dropdown list and select the value.

Including a warehouse dimension on a transaction won’t affect Inventory values. It's only used for tracking and reporting purposes.

Don't see the location you want to select?

When you create a bill at the top level, you can select from all active locations, unless your user account is restricted to specific entities.

When you create a bill at the entity level, you can select from active locations within that entity only.
To set additional dimensions that are not visible in the line, select the Show details tab (or Ctrl + down arrow) to reveal them.

This tab appears in the middle of the line and is visible when you select any field in the entry.

If you frequently need to set a dimension that does not display in the line by default, you can move entry fields to include it. For example, if you often provide an item ID for each line item, you can promote the dimension to line level.
If your company uses the release to pay feature and you want to release and authorize a line item for payment, select the Release to pay checkbox at the end of the line.
Release to pay allows you to control the line items in a bill that are available for payment. By default, Release to pay is not selected for a new line, meaning the line item must be authorized for payment (released) before it can be paid. To release a line item during bill entry, you need Bills: Release permissions.
Learn more about releasing line items for payment.
Post the bill.
If you use bill approvals, select Submit instead.
If you're not ready to post the bill, select Draft to save it as a draft.

Next steps

Your next steps depend on whether your company uses bill approvals.