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# Vendor Bill Inbox and matching bank payments to Bills

A bill is money you owe a vendor for something you already received, recorded before you pay it. Recording it when it arrives puts the cost in the month it belongs to, and your books show what you still owe (your accounts payable). When you pay, the payment closes the bill instead of counting as a second expense.

The Bill Inbox saves the typing. Upload or forward a vendor's PDF or photo, and BooksGPT reads it into a bill for you to check. A bill is not posted until you say so, and BooksGPT never sends money to a vendor. (A distributor settlement statement is the exception: it can post on its own. See [Record a distributor settlement statement](https://help.booksgpt.ai/en/article/record-a-tcetra-settlement-b34975/).)

${youtube}[Watch: How to record a bill and match the bank payment in BooksGPT](Kie9ksA9UMU)

## 1. Add the bill to the inbox

1. Open **All pages** in the left sidebar, then click **Purchases** and **[Bill Inbox](https://app.booksgpt.ai/go/bills/inbox)**. The page is called **Vendor Bill Inbox**.
2. Click **Upload Bill** and choose the file: a PDF up to 20 MB, or a JPEG or PNG photo up to 10 MB.
3. Or forward the vendor's email. Under **Forward Bills by email**, click **Copy** and forward the email to that address. If there is no address yet, a workspace admin clicks **Create email address** first.

![Vendor Bill Inbox, with Upload Bill, the forwarding address, and three bills in the inbox](https://booksgpt.ai/help/vendor-bill-inbox/inbox-page-v1.png)

When BooksGPT has read the file, its row says **Needs review**.

| Workspace members who can edit the books can forward bills from their own sign-in address. For any other address, the owner clicks **Add extra sender** under **Who can email bills**.

## 2. Check the bill and save it as a draft

1. Click **Review Bill**.
2. Click **View original**, and compare it with the form: **Vendor**, **Bill number**, **Issue date**, **Due date**, and each line's **Description**, **Qty** and **Unit price**.
3. Choose a **Category** for every line. The category is the expense account the cost goes to, such as Office Supplies or Repairs, and it decides where the cost shows on your profit and loss.
4. If an orange **Check before saving** box appears, fix what it lists. When it asks, tick the box that says you compared the flagged fields.
5. If it says the bill may already exist, click **Open possible duplicate** and compare. If the two are the same bill, stop here and **Dismiss** this one. Only if they really differ, tick **Create a separate Bill after reviewing the possible duplicate** and type a **Reason**.
6. Click **Create Bill draft**.

![Review vendor Bill for Prairie Foods bill 1184, with View original and Create Bill draft](https://booksgpt.ai/help/vendor-bill-inbox/review-ordinary-v1.png)

If a line is goods you keep in stock, or freight on that stock, the page also asks how each line should be recorded. Leave **Ordinary Bill** for anything that is not stock. For stock, see [Receive inventory on Bills](https://help.booksgpt.ai/en/article/receive-inventory-on-bills-1wm14fx/).

## 3. Post the bill

A draft is not in your books yet. Posting it is what records the cost and the amount you owe.

1. On the inbox row, click **Open draft**. You can also open **All pages**, then click **Purchases** and **[Bills](https://app.booksgpt.ai/go/bills)**, and the bill.
2. Check it once more, then click **Save & post**.

![Posted Bill 1184 for $420.00, with Record payment](https://booksgpt.ai/help/vendor-bill-inbox/editor-posted-v5.png)

The status now reads **Received**, which means you owe the full amount.

## 4. Match the bank payment to the bill

When you pay the vendor, the money leaving your bank or card shows up in your bank feed. That payment is not a new expense: the expense was recorded with the bill. Matching tells BooksGPT the payment settles the bill.

1. Open **All pages**, then click **Daily work** and **[Transactions](https://app.booksgpt.ai/go/review)**, filtered to **To review**. **Review inbox** works the same way.
2. Find the payment and open its category list.
3. Under **Recommended**, choose **Match to** and the bill. **Exact match** means the payment equals what the bill still owes.

![The category list offering Match to Bill 1184, marked Exact match](https://booksgpt.ai/help/vendor-bill-inbox/category-match-v3.png)

4. In **Match to vendor Bills**, tick the bill. If one payment covered several bills from the same vendor, tick each of them.
5. Click **Match to Bill**. With more than one bill ticked, the button says how many, such as **Match 2 Bills**.

![Match to vendor Bills, with Bill 1184 ticked and Match to Bill](https://booksgpt.ai/help/vendor-bill-inbox/picker-v5.png)

A payment smaller than the bill pays part of it, and the rest stays open. A payment larger than the bills you ticked pays them, and the extra becomes a **Vendor prepayment**: a credit with that vendor for a later bill.

### Record the payment from the bill instead

On a posted bill, click **Record payment**.

- If the payment is in your bank feed, click **Already paid from a connected account?** and pick it. For a payment larger than the bill, use **Transactions** instead, so the extra can become a prepayment.
- If the payment will never appear in a connected account, such as cash, fill in **Amount**, **Date** and **Paid from**, then click **Record payment**. This records a payment you already made. It does not send money.

||| Record each payment once. If you recorded a payment on the bill and the bank payment later shows up in your feed, choose **Link to recorded payment** in its category list. Matching it again would count the cash twice.

## What your books say now

Using the $420.00 bill from Prairie Foods:

- **When you post the bill:** Office Supplies goes up by $420.00 on your profit and loss, and accounts payable goes up by $420.00.
- **When the payment arrives in your bank feed:** your bank balance goes down by $420.00, and the $420.00 waits in Uncategorized Expense until someone reviews it. Until you match it, your profit and loss shows the cost twice.
- **When you match the payment:** the $420.00 moves out of Uncategorized Expense, and accounts payable goes down by $420.00. The bill reads **Paid**, and the cost is counted once, on the bill.

## If something goes wrong

- **The bill is not offered in the category list.** Post it first: drafts are never offered. If the bank row already has a category, clear the category and open the list again. Only bills issued from 90 days before to 30 days after the payment date are offered. For a payment outside that window, click **Record payment** on the bill with the date the money left, then choose **Link to recorded payment** on the bank row.
- **You matched the wrong bill.** On **Transactions**, open the payment and click **Unmatch Bill payment**. On **Review inbox**, click the button where **Approve** was (its tip says **Unmatch**). The row goes back to review, and the bill is open again.
- **BooksGPT could not read the file.** Click **Retry extraction**, or **Enter the bill by hand** and type it from the original.

## Related

- [Bills: track what you owe and match bank payments](https://help.booksgpt.ai/en/article/bills-track-what-you-owe-and-match-bank-payments-1seorr1/), to type a bill yourself
- [Receive inventory on Bills](https://help.booksgpt.ai/en/article/receive-inventory-on-bills-1wm14fx/), for stock
- [Create an invoice draft from a PDF or photo](https://help.booksgpt.ai/en/article/create-an-invoice-draft-from-a-pdf-or-photo-1ajjxel/), for an invoice you send
- [Email receipts into BooksGPT](https://help.booksgpt.ai/en/article/email-receipts-into-booksgpt-16f78w4/), for a receipt you already paid