Getting started with bills

Bills to Pay records what you owe your suppliers. A bill can be a contractor's invoice, a software subscription or equipment hire, for example. You can see which bills are due and record what you've paid. You can also link costs to projects.

If a supplier's people log time on your projects in Avaza, you can add that time to the supplier's bill. You don't have to type it again.

Set up bills

Avaza fills in most settings when you sign up. Before your first bill, check these settings under Settings.

• Invoice & Bill Settings. At the top, the Default Invoice/Billing Address is the address shown on your bills and invoices. To show a different address, tick Override Display Address. Further down, the Bills area has these settings:
  • Default Bill Trading Term: sets each bill's due date, unless the supplier has its own term.
  • Bill Prefix and Bill Payment Prefix: the text before bill and payment numbers.
  • Show Amounts as: whether bill amounts are tax inclusive or exclusive by default.
  • Default Bill Inventory Item for Timesheets: the item used when you add time to a bill.
  • Enable Project Bill Link: lets you link each bill line to a project.

• Bill Templates, below the Bills area, set how your bills look. You can have several templates. Each one has its own company name, logo, address and colour. To change the status words printed on your bills, open a template's Layout tab and edit Bill Statuses.

• Tax: the taxes your suppliers charge you. See setting up tax.
• Inventory Items: the things suppliers bill you for. New accounts start with a few. When you choose an item on a bill, Avaza fills in the item's cost price. See inventory items.

Create a bill

1. Go to Bills to Pay and click Create Bill.

2. Choose the Supplier. For a new supplier, click Add new supplier and enter the company name, currency and a contact. The currency is set to your account currency at first. Then click Create.
   The bill uses the supplier's currency and bill trading term. You can change both on the bill. Avaza saves a new supplier as a company in Contacts, like a customer. You can edit the supplier's details there later.

   

3. Check the details at the top: Reference # (for example the supplier's invoice number), Issue Date, Due Date, Currency, Purchase Order #, Supplier Contact, Bill Template, Amounts are and Subject.

4. Add a line for each item. Choose the Type, which is an inventory item. Then enter the Description, Qty, Unit Price, Disc % and Tax Rate. To add more lines, click Add Row. If project links are switched on, choose a project under Link project.

   

5. Click Verify & Save if the bill is correct, or Save Draft to finish it later.

If your plan has limits, suppliers count towards its limit on external companies, as customers do. A monthly invoice limit also applies to bills, but bills are counted separately from invoices. Avaza tells you when you reach either limit.

After you save the bill, you can attach the supplier's invoice to it. Open the bill and click Add Attachment. Upload a file from your computer, or choose one from Dropbox or Google Drive. Your supplier can see the attachments.

Add a supplier's time

You can add time to a bill when all of these are true:

• The time was logged by a contact of the supplier's company.
• The time's timesheet category is payable on that project. When a category is added to a project, the project copies the is Payable? setting from Settings › Timesheet Settings. This doesn't happen when you use Add to existing Projects. To fix that, see timesheet categories.
• The time is approved (or automatically approved) and isn't on a bill yet.

On the bill, click Add Time and tick the projects. You can also filter by timesheet users, categories, or sections and tasks. Choose the time period and a grouping, such as by Project & Task. Tick the details each line shows, then click Add Time. On each line, the hours become the quantity. The cost rate on the time entries becomes the unit price. See cost rates.

To list only the suppliers with time that isn't on a bill yet, tick Only display suppliers with unbilled Timesheets when you create the bill.

Verify and pay a bill

Bills have no separate approval step. A bill stays a Draft until someone verifies it. To verify a bill, click Verify & Save or choose Actions › Mark as Verified.

• Record Payment: record what you paid. The Payment Amount is set to the bill's balance. For a part payment, enter a smaller amount. Add the Payment Date and a Reference #, then click Save Payment.
• PDF and Web View: download the bill, or open the online version to share with your supplier.
• Actions: Revert to Draft, Apply Existing Payment, Copy, Void Bill or Delete. After a bill has a payment, you can't revert it to draft, void it or delete it.

The Activity History at the bottom of a bill shows what happened to the bill, who did it and when.

If you paid several bills with one transfer, record it as one payment. Go to Bills to Pay › Payments and click Record Payment. Choose the supplier and save the payment. Then click Apply to Bill on the payment. Enter an Amount to Allocate for each bill that the payment covers, and click Apply Payment. You can also start from a bill. Open the bill and choose Actions › Apply Existing Payment to allocate part of the payment to it.

Keep track of your bills

The Bills to Pay page lists every bill with its supplier, dates, amount paid and balance. You can filter by status or search for a bill. At first, the status filter is set to Open. Open shows every bill that is draft, verified, late or partly paid. After that, the filter remembers the last status you chose in that browser. If a bill seems to be missing, check the status filter.

The Project Bills widget lists the bills that have lines linked to a project.

To see how long each supplier's bills have been unpaid, run the Bill Aging and Bill Aging Details reports. You find them under Finance in Reports. To find supplier time that isn't on a bill yet, use the Bill Payable Status and Bill Paid Status filters in the Timesheet Details report.

Sync with your accounting software

If you use Xero, the Xero integration syncs your Avaza bills to Xero. See the Xero integration.

The QuickBooks Online integration doesn't sync bills. It syncs invoices, payments, customers, items and taxes. See the QuickBooks Online integration.