QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Automating Recurring Bills

A lot of your bills are due the same time every month, and some are even the same amount every month. For example, your $1,000 rent check is due the first of every month.Your electric bill is due the 19th of the month, but the amount varies each time. When you reorder office supplies or inventory, the items you buy tend to be the same each time. All of these bills are perfect for QuickBooks' memorized transactions.

In QuickBooks, you can memorize bills and reuse them. You can even create a group of bills, so you can process all the bills due on the same day of the month. Even when some fields change, recalling a transaction with most of the fields filled in pares time from your bill paying.

Memorizing a Bill

Here's how to memorize a bill:

1. Choose Vendors→Enter Bills.

   QuickBooks opens the Enter Bills dialog box.

2. Fill in all the fields that will be the same on each bill, as illustrated in Figure 10-3

   If a field changes for each bill, such as the Amount Due, simply leave that field blank. When you use the memorized bill, fill in the empty fields with the values on the bill that your vendor sent.

   

   Figure 10-3. Top: Fill in the fields that stay the same, such as the Vendor, Amount Due, Terms, Accounts, and so on. In the Date field, choose the date for the next bill due date. If you save the bill, QuickBooks adds the bill to the list of bills to be paid. Bottom: When ...