QuickBooks 2010: The Missing Manual

Chapter 9. Paying for Expenses

Although most small business owners sift through the daily mail looking for the envelopes that contain checks, they usually find more envelopes containing bills. One frustrating aspect of running a business is that you often have to pay for the items you sell before you can invoice your customers for the goods.

When you use QuickBooks, paying bills is a multistep process. If you want your financial records to be right, you have to tell the program about the expenses you’ve incurred. And, if you want your vendors to leave you alone, you have to pay the bills they send.

Handling expenses can take several forms. QuickBooks is up to the challenge and, aside from a few idiosyncrasies that drive accountants wild, it succeeds. This chapter explains your choices for paying bills (now or later) and describes how to enter bills and your payments. If you pay bills right away, you’ll learn how to write checks, use a credit card, or pay with cash in QuickBooks. If you enter bills in QuickBooks for payment later, you’ll learn how to handle the easy ones, such as rent, as well as reimbursable expenses and inventory.

QuickBooks is happy to help you through every step of the process: entering bills you receive, setting up bill payments, and even printing the checks you mail to vendors. But for modest enterprises with few expenses, writing checks by hand and entering them in the program works just as well.

When to Pay Expenses

When it comes to handling expenses, QuickBooks ...