QuickBooks 2013: The Missing Manual

Chapter 9. Paying for Expenses

Although most small business owners sift through the daily mail looking for envelopes containing checks, they usually find more 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.

If you want your financial records to be right, you have to tell QuickBooks about the expenses you’ve incurred. And, if you want your vendors to leave you alone, you have to pay the bills they send. Paying for expenses can take several forms, but QuickBooks is up to the challenge.

This chapter explains your choices for paying bills (now or later) and describes how to enter bills and record your bill payments. If you pay right away, you’ll learn how to write checks, use a debit or credit card, and pay with cash in QuickBooks, among other options. If you enter bills in QuickBooks for payment later, you’ll learn how to handle the recurring 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 if you want to pay later, setting up bill payments, and even printing checks you can 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, you can pay now or pay later; QuickBooks has features for both options. (You can choose to ...