A bill is not a receipt, and QuickBooks treats them differently
A receipt is proof of something already paid. The fuel was bought, the card was charged, the money is gone. A bill is a request to pay later. The supplier delivered drywall on net 30 terms and the money has not moved yet.
QuickBooks Online has a separate record for each. A paid receipt usually becomes an Expense (QuickBooks calls it a Purchase), or it is attached to the card or bank transaction already in the feed. An unpaid supplier invoice should become a Bill, which shows up in accounts payable, ages over time and is closed later with a bill payment.
Getting this wrong is common and it causes real trouble. If a supplier invoice is posted as an Expense, the cost appears as paid before any money left the account. Then when the payment clears the bank, it either gets posted again or sits unmatched. The AP aging report stops being useful, and nobody can trust it to plan cash.
So the first thing ReceiptQBO does with any scanned document is decide what it is: a receipt, a bill or a credit note. That decision drives everything after it.
What gets read from a scanned bill
Supplier invoices are busier than receipts. There are bill to and ship to addresses, purchase order numbers, terms, line items and sometimes several tax lines. The AI model reads what matters for the books:
- Vendor, matched to an existing vendor in the client's QuickBooks company where possible.
- Bill date and the amounts, subtotal, sales tax and total.
- Line items, so a bill for materials and delivery can be coded to two different accounts.
- Currency and the document type.
Each key field (vendor, date, total, tax and account) gets its own confidence score. A clean PDF invoice emailed by a supplier usually reads cleanly. A photographed carbon copy from a parts counter may not, and the uncertain field is what you see first in review.
Credit notes are recognized as their own type, so a supplier credit does not get posted as a new cost.
Fwd: Your Lowe's receipt
Forwarded email, 2 min ago
IMG_4471.HEIC
Client link, 9 min ago
Invoice #88213 from Sunbelt Rentals
Gmail filter, 22 min ago
38 files from October folder
Batch upload, 1 hr ago
Due dates, terms and the AP workflow
A Bill in QuickBooks Online carries a due date, and that date is what puts it on the right line of the AP aging report. ReceiptQBO creates the Bill with the bill date and amounts from the invoice, so it lands in payables instead of in paid expenses. Before scheduling payment, check the due date in QuickBooks against the terms printed on the invoice, so the aging report shows when the supplier really expects to be paid.
A simple AP routine with ReceiptQBO looks like this:
- Suppliers email invoices to the client's forwarding address, or the office scans paper ones in a batch.
- Each bill is read, coded and either posted automatically or held for review based on the client's confidence threshold.
- On the Firm plan, an approver signs off before anything posts, which suits clients who want a second set of eyes on every payable.
- Bills appear in QuickBooks with the invoice image attached, ready to pay from QuickBooks or your payment tool.
ReceiptQBO creates the Bill. It does not pay it or move money. Paying stays with whoever handles payables today.
New vendors and coding to the right accounts
Bills often come from vendors the client has never used before: a one-time equipment rental, a new subcontractor, a sign shop. Typing in a new vendor for each one is small work that adds up. When a scanned bill comes from a vendor that is not in the QuickBooks company yet, ReceiptQBO creates the vendor along with the Bill.
Coding uses the client's own lists that sync through the connection: expense account, class, location, customer or project, billable flag and memo. That matters on job-costed books, where a lumber bill should land on the right project so it shows up on job profitability.
Vendor rules make it repeatable. A rule like "ABC Supply always goes to Job Materials, class Field Ops, billable" wins over any AI guess, and a correction in review becomes a rule with one click. For more on writing rules that hold up, see vendor rules for receipt coding.
Receipt
Ridgeline Hardware
Oct 3, $232.59
Card ending 0981
Bank line in QuickBooks
RIDGELINE HARDWARE #12
Oct 4, $232.59
Matched, 2 day window
Duplicate bills and the bill import CSV
Duplicate supplier invoices are a classic AP problem. The supplier emails the invoice, then mails a paper copy, then sends a reminder with the same PDF. Paying twice is easy when three copies are floating around.
ReceiptQBO flags a document as a likely duplicate when the file is identical, or when it has the same vendor and amount within 3 days of another document. Flagged documents are held back and not posted, so a person decides.
Some practices prefer to load bills in bulk instead of posting them one by one. For that, ReceiptQBO exports a QuickBooks bill import CSV, along with Excel (XLSX) and plain CSV exports. That is useful for a catch-up project, or when a client wants to review a month of bills in a spreadsheet before anything reaches the books.
Receipts for things already paid follow the matching flow instead, described on match receipts to bank transactions.
Who scans bills with ReceiptQBO
Bills are where receipt tools and AP tools overlap. ReceiptQBO handles bills as part of the same inbox, which suits:
- Construction and trades, with supplier invoices, subcontractor bills and job costing. See receipt capture for construction.
- Bookkeepers who receive a mix of receipts and bills from each client and do not want two separate tools to sort them.
- Small companies where the owner forwards everything to one address and wants the right record created without thinking about it.
Plans start at 49 dollars a month for one company with 300 documents a month, or half that billed yearly. Bills and receipts count the same toward the limit. Practices that handle payables for many clients usually start on the Bookkeeper plan, with up to 25 companies and 2,500 documents a month pooled, so a client with a heavy supplier month can borrow room from a quiet one. To check how a supplier invoice reads, upload one on the QuickBooks receipt scanner home page without an account.