A bill records what a supplier has charged you. Build it from the purchase order or from the goods receipt, and QTRACA keeps a snapshot of what was ordered and what arrived beside what you are being asked to pay — a three-way match, so a wrong price or a short delivery shows up before you pay it.
Where to find it: Bills in the Orders section of the main menu.
The bill list
| Column | Notes |
|---|---|
| Doc # | Your internal number for the bill. |
| Type | Bill or Credit Bill. |
| Supplier Ref | The supplier’s own invoice number — what they will quote when chasing payment. |
| Supplier | Who is charging you. |
| Bill Date / Due Date | The document date and when payment is due. |
| Total / Ccy | The value and its currency. |
| Status | Draft, Approved, Exported, Paid or Voided. |
Raising a bill
| From | What you get |
|---|---|
| A purchase order Create Bill | A draft bill pre-filled from the order, capturing the three-way-match snapshot. |
| A goods receipt Create Bill | A bill for what actually arrived — useful when the supplier bills per delivery. |
| Nothing New Bill | A blank bill, for charges with no order behind them. It opens dated today and in a currency, ready to type into. |
| The supplier’s invoice PDF | Upload it and it is read automatically, matched to a purchase order and promoted to a bill after review — see Supplier invoice ingestion. |
Bills built from a purchase order or receipt take the tax code from each source line rather than working it out again, so what you agreed is what gets billed.
Three-way match
When a bill is built from a purchase order it records, on each line, what the order said and what had been received at that moment. Those snapshots sit beside what the supplier is charging, and the differences are shown as variances:
| Variance | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Quantity variance | The billed quantity less the quantity received. A positive figure means you are being charged for more than arrived. |
| Cost variance | The billed unit cost less the cost on the purchase order. A positive figure means you are being charged more than you agreed. |
Variances are shown, not enforced. Suppliers legitimately vary a delivery or a price, and the system does not presume to know which is acceptable. The point is that you see it before approving rather than after paying.
A bill line with no snapshot — one typed by hand, with no order behind it — simply has no variance to report.
Status and actions
| Action | From | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Approve | Draft | Accepts the charge. Check the variances first — this is the moment they are for. |
| Mark Exported | Approved | Records that it has gone to your accounting system. |
| Mark Paid | Approved or Exported | Records settlement. |
| Void | Draft, Approved or Exported | Cancels the bill. A paid bill cannot be voided. |
Credit bills
Issue Credit Bill creates a credit against a bill, choosing the lines and quantities to reverse. As with credit notes on the sales side, the original bill is untouched and the credit is a document in its own right, with its own numbering.
Attaching the supplier’s document
Attach Supplier PDF stores the supplier’s own invoice against the bill, so the paperwork travels with the record. It can be viewed and removed later. Bills created by email ingestion arrive with the original attached already.
Things to know
- A discount line on a purchase order bills as a discount, not as a charge — the sign is preserved when the bill is built.
- Charge lines carry across from the order, so freight you agreed to pay is billed even though it was never received.
- Bills can be pushed to Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks, or exported as CSV. See Accounting export.
- A bill has a PDF of its own for filing, laid out like the invoice document.