Pay your vendors
Track vendor bills in Accounts Payable, record payments, and run the ACH collection batch with NACHA export.
AP is the other side of the ledger from receivables — the bills you owe vendors. Work it weekly so nothing slides into overdue, enter the odd bill that didn't come through purchasing, and record payments as you cut the checks. The same Accounting menu also holds the ACH batch, which is the reverse: a file your bank uses to draft the fleet customers who pay you by bank transfer.
Open Accounts Payable. In the sidebar, expand Accounting and click Accounts Payable. The two cards at the top size the problem: Total Open is everything you still owe, and Overdue turns red when a bill is past its due date. Overdue rows in the table are tinted so they can't hide.
Filter to what you're working. Use the tabs — Open, Partial, Paid, All — to narrow the list. Each row shows the Vendor, Invoice, Status, Invoice Date, Due Date, Amount, and Balance. Bills that came from a received purchase order are already here, so most of the list keys itself.
Enter a bill that skipped purchasing. For a bill that didn't come through a PO — rent, utilities, a shop-supply invoice — click Enter Bill. In the Enter Vendor Bill window pick the Vendor, then fill in Invoice #, Amount, Invoice Date, and Due Date (add Notes if you want), and click Save Bill. It drops into the Open tab with the others.
Record a payment. When you pay a bill, click Pay on its row. The Record Payment window shows the vendor and the balance; confirm the Amount and pick the Method — Check, ACH / Bank Transfer, Credit Card, Cash, or Other.
Say which account the money leaves. Under Method, Paid from lists your registers — the bank accounts you pay out of, shown by name with the bank and last four digits. It starts on the vendor's usual account if they have one, otherwise your shop default. Change it if this bill is going out of a different chequebook.
Check the cheque number. Paying by Check shows a Cheque # box already filled with the next number in that register's book — the hint beside it reads Next in book. Type over it if you're writing a different cheque; Meridian tells you if that number was already used (and who it paid) or how many numbers you're skipping, but it never refuses the number you actually wrote.
Anything else that identifies the payment goes in Memo (optional) on a cheque, or Reference # on the other methods — the cheque number itself belongs in Cheque #.
Click Record Payment. The confirmation names the cheque: "Cheque #1043 recorded — $412.80 to Interstate Batteries". Pay less than the full balance and the bill moves to the Partial tab with the remainder still showing.
Switch to collecting: open ACH Batch. For customers who owe you and pay by bank draft, click Accounting → ACH Batch. The cards show Customers in Batch, Total Batch Amount, No ACH on File, and ACH Config — that last one reads Ready or Incomplete. The table lists each customer with banking info on file and a balance due.
Download the NACHA file. When ACH Config reads Ready, click Download NACHA File and upload it to your bank to draft the whole batch at once. A NACHA file is just the standard format banks accept for pulling those payments. Customers who owe money but have no banking info are called out below the table so you can chase the paperwork before the next run.
The first time you build an ACH batch, ACH Config will read Incomplete and a banner points you to Settings → Payments → ACH / EFT to enter your Company ID and ODFI routing number. Those identify your shop to the banking network; the file won't generate until both are filled in.
What happens behind the scenes
Entering a vendor bill records money you owe — it raises your payables and, when the bill came from a received purchase order, ties back to the parts you took in. Recording a payment does the opposite: cash goes down and that vendor's balance drops by what you paid, with a partial payment simply leaving the remainder open. The money comes out of the account behind the register you picked, and that choice is frozen onto the payment — changing a register tomorrow never rewrites where yesterday's cheque went. Each payment is kept as its own record, so a bill paid with two cheques can tell you which cheque covered what. None of this touches the customer side of your books. The ACH batch is a separate errand entirely — it doesn't move any money by itself. It gathers the customers who owe you and have bank details on file into one file your bank reads; the money arrives when the bank processes the draft, and their receivable clears when that payment posts. Every bill entered, every payment recorded, and every NACHA file generated is stamped with who did it and when, viewable under Settings → Audit Log.
Troubleshooting
Bills from purchase orders only appear once the PO is received — until then there's nothing to owe. If it was a bill that never had a PO, it won't exist until someone enters it with Enter Bill.
Pay only shows while a bill still has a balance. A bill already in the Paid tab has nothing left to pay, so its row has no button.
Your shop has no registers set up, which is rare — every shop starts with one. The payment still records and still posts to the account your shop had configured for paying bills. Add or reopen a register under Settings → Payments → Manage registers; see registers.
That number is already recorded against another payment in the same register, and the note names the vendor and amount it went to. It's a warning, not a block — if you really did write that cheque, record it. If you didn't, correct the number; the box shows the next unused one when you re-pick the register.
Open the vendor's record, click Edit, and set Normally paid from to the register you actually use. Leave it on Shop default for everyone else — it only needs setting for vendors paid out of a specific account.
The button only appears when the batch has at least one customer and ACH Config reads Ready. If it's missing, either no customer has both banking info and a balance, or your Company ID and ODFI routing number still need entering under Settings → Payments → ACH / EFT.
The batch only includes customers who have both a balance due and complete banking info on file. If a paying customer is missing, add their routing and account details on their customer record and they'll be in the next batch — the count of customers left out is shown right under the table.