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Entering Bills vs. Writing Checks in QuickBooks
There are two ways to manage your bill payments in QuickBooks. The simplest way is to simply enter the payment (whether by check, credit card or cash) into QuickBooks. However, the best way for most companies to manage bill payments in QuickBooks is to enter the bills and then pay them. This takes a little more time, but it is still very simple and there are some significant advantages:
- it helps you keep your cash as long as possible by making it easy to pay bills when they are due, not before
- it helps you to keep track of how much money you owe. Rather than looking at a pile of bills that you have yet to enter into QuickBooks or pay, you can look at an accounts payable aging report to see exactly how much you owe and when the payments are due.
- if you always use the entering and paying bills method, you will find it easier to look into historical transactions.
Given the above advantages, I recommend entering and then paying bills for almost all companies. The exceptions tend to be very small companies that only get a few bills per month and that do not have cash flow issues.
For detailed instructions on using the different methods, see The One-Step process for Paying Bills in QuickBooks and Enter and then Pay Bills in QuickBooks.
