Help / Purchases and banking

Create purchase orders and bills

Order from a supplier, turn the order into a bill and post the bill so it counts as a payable.

A Purchase Order records what you have asked a supplier for. A Bill is the supplier's invoice to you. A purchase order never touches your books; a bill does once it is posted.

You find them under Accounts > Purchases. Their lists work like the sales lists: Search document #, an All Status filter (Draft, Posted, Void, Converted), and an Export button with a CSV or Excel choice.

Create a purchase order or bill

1. Click New Purchase Order or New Bill.
2. Under Document Details, choose the Supplier, check the date, and set Due Date (optional). Pick a Branch if your company has several.
3. Under Line Items, pick an Item (the description and the item's purchase price fill in, or its sales price if no purchase price is set) or leave Custom. Set Description, Qty, Unit Price and Disc %.
4. Add Notes and Terms. There is no field for the supplier's own invoice number, so put it in the notes.
5. Click Save Purchase Order or Save Bill.

The form shows a Subtotal (before tax). Tax is worked out when you save, from each item's tax category; a custom line carries no tax. You must choose a supplier ("Please select a supplier.") and add at least one line with a description and a quantity above zero.

Convert an order to a bill

Open a draft purchase order and click Convert to Bill. A new draft bill is created with the same supplier, lines and tax, dated today, and the order is marked Converted. Review it, then post it.

Post a bill

1. Open the draft bill and click Post Bill.
2. The bill's status becomes Posted.

Posting does this:

• Debits Inventory for lines that are items tracked in stock, and debits General Expenses for everything else (services and custom lines).
• Debits a tax receivable account for each tax component, which is the tax you can claim back.
• Credits Accounts Payable for the total, tagged to the supplier.
• Adds the received quantities to stock, at the bill's unit price, for tracked items.

If an item's tax category is a reverse-charge category and a rate is configured for it, an extra self-balancing pair of tax entries is also booked. The standard reverse-charge categories are set at 0%, so nothing extra appears unless a rate was entered.

Drafts can be edited or deleted. Posted bills cannot; see Pay or void a bill and Debit notes.

Import bills

On the Bills list, Import CSV loads bills from a template whose columns are the same as the invoice template but with Supplier instead of Client. The flow, drafts and the Auto-post created bills option work as described in Import and export invoices.

Good to know

• Posting needs permission to edit Purchases, and may need approval if your company has set that up (the Approvals page).
• A bill dated inside a locked period cannot be posted: "The accounting period covering YYYY-MM-DD is locked. Cannot post to it."
• Open bills past their due date show in Payables Ageing.
• For repeating bills such as rent, see Recurring bills and payments.