QuickBooks 2021 All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 2

Paying Vendors

IN THIS CHAPTER

Working with purchase orders

Recording receipts and bills

Sending payments to vendors

Using the other Vendor-menu commands

You can make the process of tracking vendor information as simple or as sophisticated as you like. In this chapter, I assume that you’re going for sophisticated. You can make vendor management simpler, however, by not using purchase orders or an accounts payable system.

You decide whether to use purchase orders and whether to track accounts payable (amounts that you owe vendors) as part of setting up QuickBooks. You can change your decision about using purchase orders or accounts payable later. To do this, you choose the Edit⇒  Preferences command. For more information, refer to Book 2, Chapter 3.

Creating a Purchase Order

A purchase order serves a simple purpose: It tells a vendor that you want to purchase some item. In fact, a purchase order is a contract to purchase.

Many small businesses don’t use purchase orders. ...