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LNguyen916
August 25, 2022
Question

Correcting improperly recorded bill payments

  • August 25, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 0 views

I am trying to clear out hundreds of old bills that were entered and paid, but still marked unpaid in QuickBooks.

Looking at the journal, here is what happened:

When a bill arrived, the employee clicked “Bill”, selected the vendor, and entered the amount due. This is all correct as far as I can tell. It’s a debit to the Expense account and credit to A/P.

But when they paid the bill, instead of going to the bill pay tab, they went to the Cash Account and wrote a check to the vendor with a debit to A/P, and a credit to cash.


This action cleared the balance in A/P, the vendor was paid. The proper amount of expense was recorded for the period when the bill was entered. However, QuickBooks still lists the bill as unpaid.

There are hundreds of these going back a decade before I took over. Is there a good method of clearing these unpaid bills (that were actually paid) that doesn’t involve deleting the checks and reentering them in the Pay Bills tab to match it with a vendor? I can't just delete the bill since this is where the expense for the period is recorded.

Thanks for any suggestions.

1 reply

Adrian_A
Adrian_A
August 26, 2022

Thank you for the details, LNguyen916.

 

You can create a journal entry to write off the A/P balance. Before doing so, I'd recommend reaching out to your accountant for the right accounts to use or other options since you're dealing with multiple old unpaid bills.

 

Here's how to record a journal entry:

 

  1. From the Company menu, select Make General Journal Entries.
  2. Change the date and fill in the entry number if necessary.
  3. On the ACCOUNT field, select Accounts Payable.
  4. Enter the amount under the DEBIT column.
  5. In the next line, select the offset account and enter the amount under the Credit column.
  6. Select Save & Close.

 

From there, apply the journal entry to the existing debit/credit. Here's how:

 

  1. From the Vendors menu, select Pay Bills.
  2. Select the bill and choose Set Credits.
  3. Under the Credits tab, select the available credit and select Done.
  4. Select Save & Close.

 

You can check this link for the detailed steps of the process: Write off vendor balances.

 

You can also perform a reconciliation steps to ensure the transactions match your bank statement. 

 

Stay in touch if you have any other concerns or questions. Please know I’m always ready to help you.

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