Bills and Accounts Payable

Bills track the money your business owes to suppliers — the Accounts Payable side of the ledger. Every time a supplier sends you a purchase invoice for goods or services they have provided, you record it as a bill in Blankitt.

When to use bills (vs receipts)

Use a bill when...	Use a receipt when...
The supplier sent you an invoice with payment terms (e.g. Net 30)	You already paid at the till / on the spot
You owe money but have not yet paid	The transaction is closed
You want to track ageing and ensure on-time payment	You just need to record the expense for VAT / accounting
The supplier is on a recurring schedule (rent, hosting, retainers)	One-off pay-as-you-go transactions

The bill lifecycle

1. Draft — entered into Blankitt but not yet posted to the books.
2. Received — confirmed; the journal posts DR Expense + CR Accounts Payable. The bill is now an outstanding payable.
3. Overdue — past the due date and still unpaid. Surfaces on the bills list with a warning badge.
4. Paid — payment recorded; the journal posts DR Accounts Payable + CR Bank. AP is cleared.
5. Void — reversed (e.g. supplier sent a credit note or invoice was wrong).

Where it shows up in Blankitt

• Spending → Bills — the AP ledger. List, filter by status, drill into any bill.
• Dashboard — outstanding payables tile (money you owe), overdue bills count.
• Reports → Creditors aging — bills aged by 0-30 / 31-60 / 61-90 / 90+ day buckets.
• Cash-flow forecast — unpaid bills feed the projected cash-out for the next forecast horizon.
• VAT returns — purchase-side VAT on bills flows to Box 4 (VAT you can reclaim).

What is coming next (Phase 6)

The current bills surface is the minimum viable AP entry — it covers the basics. The full AP module ships in Phase 6 and will add:

• Approval workflow — multi-stage routing for bills over a threshold.
• Bill upload / OCR — drag-drop a supplier PDF to pre-fill the form.
• Supplier statement reconciliation — match a supplier statement to your AP ledger.
• Batch payment runs — pay multiple bills in a single BACS / Faster Payments file.
• Bank-detail-change verification — guard against invoice-redirect fraud.
• Duplicate supplier detection — alert if a new supplier looks like an existing one.

See also: Recording a bill · Paying a bill · Bill vs Receipt.