Recording Vendor Invoices & Payments
When a supplier sends you a bill, you need somewhere to record it, watch its due date, and mark it paid once you settle up. The Invoices tab inside Vendor Management is your accounts-payable ledger: every vendor bill lives here with its amount, due date, and payment status, so you always know what you owe and to whom.
Where this lives. Vendor invoices are part of the Vendor Management module at /vendor-management, which is separate from the vendor directory under Settings → Vendors. The directory is where you add and edit the vendors themselves; Vendor Management is where you track their bills, payments, and purchase orders. See Vendor Management Overview.
Before You Start
- Permissions. Viewing invoices needs the vendors.read permission. Creating invoices and recording payments needs vendors.write. Without write access, the buttons described below won’t appear.
- Add your vendors first. An invoice must be tied to an existing vendor. If the supplier isn’t in your list yet, add them under Settings → Vendors — see How to Manage Vendors?. The invoice form only searches existing vendors; it has no inline “create vendor” option.
Recording a Vendor Invoice
Step 1 — Open the invoice form
Go to Vendor Management → Invoices and click + New Invoice in the top-right. The New Vendor Invoice window opens.
Step 2 — Fill in the details
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Vendor (required) | Start typing to search your existing vendors and pick one. |
| Linked PO | Optional. If this bill relates to a purchase order, select it here. The list only shows POs for the vendor you chose, so pick the vendor first. |
| Invoice Number (required) | The number printed on the supplier’s bill, e.g. INV-1024. |
| Invoice Date | The date on the bill. Defaults to today. |
| Due Date | When payment is due. Used for overdue highlighting and the aging report. |
| Invoice Amount (required) | The bill amount before tax. Must be greater than 0. |
| Tax Amount | Optional tax portion. |
| Total | Calculated for you as Invoice Amount plus Tax Amount — you can’t edit it directly. |
| Notes / Remarks | Optional free text. |
Step 3 — Attach the bill (optional)
Under Attachments, click Add File to attach the original invoice — PDFs, images, and common document types (.pdf, .png, .jpg, .doc, .xls, .csv, and similar) are accepted. You can add more than one file.
On a brand-new invoice, files are held and uploaded the moment you create the invoice. If an attachment upload fails, the invoice is still saved — just reopen it and add the file from the edit screen.
Step 4 — Save
Click Create. The invoice appears in the list with a Pending status and its full amount outstanding.
To change anything later, click the pencil icon on the invoice row. In edit mode you can also add or remove attachments directly.
Understanding the Invoice List
Each row shows the invoice number, vendor, invoice and due dates, total, amount paid, and a status badge. A few things to watch for:
- Overdue bills show their due date in red — this happens automatically for any unpaid invoice whose due date has passed.
- Status is set by the app based on how much you’ve paid:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | No payment recorded yet. |
| Partial | Some — but not all — of the total has been paid. |
| Paid | The full total has been settled. |
You can’t set the status by hand; it updates as you record payments.
Searching and filtering
Use the search box to find an invoice by its number. Click the filter icon to narrow the list by Vendor, Payment Status, and a Due From / Due To date range. Click Clear to reset the filters.
Exporting to CSV
Click Export CSV to download the current list — filters and search included — as a spreadsheet. The file is named with today’s date, handy for sharing with your accountant or reconciling against your books.
Recording a Payment
You settle a bill by recording the total amount paid to date against it. Rentablez then works out whether that makes the invoice Partial or fully Paid.
Step 1 — Open the payment window
On any unpaid invoice row, click the Pay button. The Record Payment window opens and shows the Invoice Total and how much has been Already Paid.
Step 2 — Enter the payment
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Amount Paid (total to date) (required) | The cumulative amount paid so far, not just this instalment. It pre-fills with the outstanding balance for a one-click full payment. |
| Payment Date | Defaults to today. |
| Payment Mode | Choose how you paid (cash, bank transfer, cheque, etc.). Don’t see the mode you need? Use the add new option in the dropdown to create one on the spot. |
| Reference / Transaction ID | Optional — a UTR, cheque number, or other reference. |
“Total to date” matters. Because the field is the running total paid, recording a partial payment then coming back later means you enter the new cumulative figure, not just the extra amount. Paying the full total flips the status to Paid; anything less makes it Partial.
Step 3 — Save
Click Record Payment. The status badge and the Paid column update immediately.
Settling Several Bills at Once
When you pay a batch of vendors in one run, you don’t have to open each invoice.
- In the invoice list, tick the checkboxes for the bills you want to settle. (Already-paid invoices are ignored.)
- Click the Mark as Paid action that appears for the selection.
- In the Mark … as Paid window, set a shared Payment Date, Payment Mode, and optional Reference / Transaction ID. The window shows how many invoices are selected and the Total Outstanding.
- Click Mark as Paid.
Bulk Mark as Paid settles every selected invoice in full. For a partial payment, use the single-invoice Pay action instead.
Where Your Bills Show Up Next
Once invoices are recorded, the rest of the module keeps totals in sync:
- The Dashboard rolls up Pending, Paid, and Overdue totals across all vendors.
- The Reports tab ages your unpaid bills into buckets and builds a per-vendor statement.
See Payables Aging & Vendor Statements for those views.