What tool or template can a business use to keep track of its bills?

What should each bill record carry?

Give each bill one row, card or record, with these fields:

AccountingTools' explainer on accounts payable says the payment date is based on the invoice date, and treats a discount taken as a reduction in the amount owed. Where a bill prints its own due date, copy it: a row without a due date or terms says what is owed but not when.

How are recurring and automatically charged bills carried?

Each class enters the tracker differently:

Autopay is a mark, not a class: a bill the vendor also charges automatically, such as a utility that still sends monthly bills, is marked autopay and closed from the bank or card statement, never paid by hand.

Zoho Books' undated help on other actions for bills says any recorded bill can be made recurring and any bill edited; correct each repeated bill to the vendor's actual one rather than entering that bill again. Trello's undated card-dates help says a card with a repeating due date, once marked done, takes the next date and reverts to not done, so keep each period's payment record elsewhere, such as a row per period.

How does the tracker show what is due next and what is overdue?

Microsoft's undated help page for Excel's TODAY function shows that subtracting TODAY() from a date returns the number of days between the current date and that date. In Excel, a column holding the due date minus TODAY() therefore counts down and turns negative once the date passes. The page adds that the result displays correctly only in a cell formatted as General or Number, so format the column as Number, and that if TODAY does not update when expected, Excel's calculation should be set to Automatic.

Each row takes the first status that fits:

What does a working tracker look like?

On May 20, with the next review in 7 days and payments taking up to 3 days to arrive, Due now covers 0 to 10 days:

Sorted by days to due, the open rows give the week's view: Lakeside Printing past due, Riverside Water's bill missing, Cloudbox Storage's card charge coming, Metro Electric due now and Harbor Office Supply coming later, still unapproved. Crane Legal's closed row stays as the record of its payment.

What routine keeps the tracker current?

Start with a row for every unpaid bill and add each period's standing rows as it begins. Then each bill follows these steps, in order:

1. Record it on arrival. Whoever receives a bill searches the tracker for its bill number under any vendor name, and for its amount. A reminder or copy of a listed bill updates that row, and a bill matching a standing or autopay row fills it in; any other bill gets a row that day, with its file stored where the row's link points. A vendor statement listing a bill with no row means one is missing.
2. Record the approval. Note who approved it and when; an unapproved row stays in view.
3. Review the view weekly. Pass past-due and due-now rows to whoever decides what is paid, and overpaid rows to whoever handles recovering a duplicate payment, a separate task. Chase missing bills, and find out why any autopay charge is late before anyone pays it by hand. Choosing which bills to pay is a separate question about reading an aging report.
4. Check the row before anyone pays. Run the check in the last section.
5. Record each payment the same day. Enter its date, amount and reference when it is sent or scheduled, with any discount or credit, and close autopay rows from the statement. If the bill is also in your accounting software, record the same payment against it there the same day, so neither record shows the bill paid without the other; Intuit's help on bills, checks and expenses says a QuickBooks Online bill is closed with Pay bills, not a check or expense. A row at zero is closed, never deleted.
6. Agree the tracker at each month end. Use the books or the statements, as the next section explains.

Is the tracker the record of what is owed, or a copy of the books?

Intuit's QuickBooks Online help on choosing between cash and accrual methods says the accrual method records expenses when you receive the bill and the cash method when you pay it, so the answer depends on whether your books hold bills before they are paid.

What if bills are entered in accounting software?

Intuit's QuickBooks Online help on the differences between bills, checks and expenses says to enter a bill for a transaction you will pay in the future. Once every bill is entered, the software's unpaid bills are the tracker, together with any QuickBooks Online bill still in the For review tab. Intuit's help on bills, checks and expenses also says to record a transaction paid on the spot as a check or expense, so automatic charges with no bill first are not among its bills; keep them as autopay rows on a short list (vendor, expected date and amount), reviewed weekly with the unpaid bills and closed from the statement.

A separate tracker kept as well must agree with them. AccountingTools' guide to reconciling accounts payable describes a comparable check inside the books: verifying that the detailed total of payables outstanding matches the payables balance in the general ledger. At each month end, match every open row to an unpaid bill with the same balance, and every unpaid bill to an open row, leaving out autopay rows the software does not hold as bills. Intuit's help on entering bills in QuickBooks Online says bills you upload or receive through the QuickBooks Business Network appear in a For review tab, while bills added by hand appear in the Unpaid tab and require no further review. Review each of those the day it arrives and give it a row; at month end, one still in For review does not count as a match.

Before changing either record, find which one is wrong from the bill and the payment record. If the tracker shows a payment the software does not, confirm it went out, then record it against the bill there; if it went in as a check or expense, which Intuit's help on bills, checks and expenses says records the payment too, correct that entry instead of recording the payment twice. Reopen a row only once you confirm its payment was cancelled or never sent. If the software shows a bill with no row, add the row.

What if the books record bills only when they are paid?

On the cash basis, if you do not enter bills before paying them, nothing in the books shows what is owed, so the tracker is the whole record. It must hold every bill from the day it arrives, including disputed and unapproved ones, keep closed rows rather than delete them, and keep each row linked to its bill. A bill in the tracker, including one open when you started it, is listed there but not posted in the books; it reaches them only as it is paid.

Each month end, check the tracker against the bank and card statements instead. Every bill payment on a statement should match a payment recorded on a row, open or closed, and every payment recorded on a row that month should appear on a statement. A payment not yet on a statement, such as an uncashed check, carries to next month's check; reopen the row only once you confirm that payment was cancelled or never sent.

Which option fits, and what can each do?

Whether bills reach your books, how many there are and how many people handle them decide the choice:

If your software has no place for approval, decide where approval is recorded before relying on the check that a bill is approved. Whether to start entering bills before paying them, and what that means for your accounting method, is a separate question.

When several people handle bills, keep one shared tracker all of them can open, and let only those who add rows, record approvals or record payments edit it. AccountingTools' explainer on accounts payable calls for a firm requirement that whoever receives an invoice forwards it immediately; here, that means adding its row the same day, so whoever pays can see it. Anyone who can edit a shared spreadsheet can change its approval column, so how approval is given and recorded is a separate question.

Where can you get a ready-made template, and how do you judge one?

Ready-made templates come from these classes of publisher, though neither is certain to offer one that fits:

• Spreadsheet makers. Google's undated help on using templates says Google Sheets has a Template Gallery, where choosing a template opens a copy. The page's examples are resumes, budgets and order forms; it does not say whether the gallery has a bill tracker. If it has none, build a blank sheet from the field table. In Google Sheets, check Google's own help for the date function and recalculation setting before relying on the days-to-due column.
• Independent template publishers. Vertex42's Bill Tracker Worksheet page, updated 2/2/2022, describes listing all your recurring bills with their expected payment amounts and checking them off when they are paid. The page presents it for use in a budget planner and marks its license Personal Use (not for distribution or resale), so check the publisher's terms before using it in a business, and expect to add most of the field table's columns.

Judge any candidate against the field table, column by column, and add whatever it lacks; check especially that its balance handles part payments and credits and that its days to due or status is calculated, not typed. Where to find recordkeeping templates in general is a separate question.

Which document backs each bill, and how does the record point to it?

The bill itself backs the row. IRS Publication 583 lists invoices among supporting documents, says they support the entries in your books, and says to keep them in an orderly fashion and in a safe place.

Save each bill as a file named from its row, such as HarborOfficeSupply-H2207.pdf, and put its link in the row. Keep a paper bill's original unless your storage meets IRS requirements: Publication 583 says originals may be destroyed provided the electronic storage system has been tested for compliance and procedures keep it compliant, points to Revenue Procedure 97-22 for details, and says penalties may otherwise apply unless the originals are kept. In software, keep the file with the bill: Zoho Books' undated help on other actions for bills says you can attach files to a bill. Intuit's help on entering bills in QuickBooks Online describes uploading a bill file as one way to enter a new bill; use it instead of typing the bill in, never as well, or one invoice becomes two bills. A row with no link has nothing to check its amount against before payment.

How does the tracker stop a bill being paid twice?

AccountingTools' explainer on accounts payable says duplicate payments can occur when the same invoice is entered more than once, when an original and a copy are both processed, or when vendor names or invoice numbers are recorded inconsistently. So the check does not rely on vendor names. Before any bill is paid by hand, confirm on its row:

• Recorded once. No other row carries the same bill number under any vendor name, ignoring spaces and hyphens, or the same amount and bill date; either match is a possible duplicate to resolve before paying.
• Approved and open. Its approval is recorded and its balance owing is above zero.
• Supported. The row's amount matches the bill behind its link, and the amount to be paid is no more than the balance owing, checked bill by bill, not as a batch total.
• Not paid automatically. The row is not marked autopay, and neither the vendor list nor the bill says the amount is charged or sent automatically.

These checks show a bill is recorded once, marked approved, unpaid and supported. In a shared spreadsheet the approval column shows only what someone entered, so confirm the approval with the approver named in the row until approval is recorded where only approvers can give it, a separate question. The checks also do not confirm where the money goes. A bill or message that changes a vendor's payment details needs verifying before anything is paid, which is a separate question.

In accounting software, record each payment against its bill: Intuit's help on the differences between bills, checks and expenses says not to pay an existing bill with a check or expense, which may cause the bill to appear unpaid on your reports. Recovering a payment that went out twice anyway is a separate task.