Bill Pay: Create & Send a Bill Payment

Guide to selecting a bill, choosing a payee, scheduling or sending a payment and tracking its status

Guide to selecting a bill, choosing a payee, scheduling or sending a payment and tracking its status.

Ways to add a bill

You can create bills by hand, but we recommend bringing them in automatically. The details are filled in for you, so there’s less to retype and less to get wrong.

Recommended:

• Email bills to PEX. Forward an invoice to your PEX billing email address and we pull out the vendor, amount and dates for you. See Email bills to PEX.
• Sync unpaid bills from your accounting system. This works with QuickBooks Online today, and Aplos is coming soon. In the QuickBooks Online connector settings, select Sync outstanding bills from QuickBooks into PEX under Configure bill sync and your unpaid bills come into PEX for payment. See the QuickBooks Online connector for Prepaid or Credit Expense.

Create a bill manually for a one-off bill or when neither option fits. Follow the steps below.

1. Create a bill

To submit a new bill:

1. Log in to the Dashboard

2. Navigate to Bills

3. Click Create bill

4. Upload the bill (optional)

5. Select a vendor

Note:

If you don’t have any vendors yet, go to Vendors and create one.

6. Enter:

   • Bill amount
   • Bill date
   • Due date

7. Add tags (optional, if enabled). If the vendor has a previous bill, its tags are copied for you — see Tags from the vendor’s last bill below

8. Click Preview

9. Click Submit

Tags from the vendor’s last bill

When you pick a vendor, we copy the tags (GL codes) from your last bill for that vendor so you don’t code the same thing twice. You’ll see Tags copied from the last bill for vendor name with a Clear link if you’d rather start fresh.

A few things to know:

• We only copy from the most recent bill that wasn’t a draft, rejected or cancelled — if that bill had no tags, nothing is copied, even when an older one did
• If the last bill was split, each line keeps its share of the total and the amounts are rescaled to match the new bill to the cent
• Change the vendor before you touch the tags and the tags swap too; once you’ve edited a tag, changing the vendor leaves your entries alone
• A copied value that’s since been disabled is dropped, so check any required tag before you submit

This works on the create bill form and when you edit a bill in your inbox. See Email bills to PEX.

Bill approval

• After submission, the bill will enter the approval workflow, if one exists.
• If no policy exists, Admins with Manage bills & vendors permission must approve the bill.
• You may edit tags while the bill is in Pending approval.

Approvers can:

• Approve
• Reject

from the Bill Details page.

What you’ll see on the Review tab

The Review tab opens sorted by due date, oldest first, so the most overdue bills are at the top. Select Created, Due or Amount to sort by that column, and select it again to reverse it. History opens newest first by created date.

• Overdue labels. A bill that’s 1 to 30 days past due shows a yellow Overdue label next to the due date. Past 30 days it becomes a red 30+ days overdue. Bills due today or later show the date on its own.
• A running total. Tick any bills and the action bar shows how many you’ve selected and what they come to — for example 3 selected · $230.00 — so you don’t add them up by hand.
• First bill from a vendor. When a bill is the oldest one you’ve raised for that vendor, we show a First bill label beside the vendor name and a note where the recent bills list would be. It’s a cue to check the payment details before money goes to a payee for the first time.
• Nothing to review. An empty queue shows a confirmation that you’re all caught up, not an error. If you have more than one linked account, we also remind you that the queue only covers the business you’re in — approvals waiting in your other accounts won’t appear here.

Here’s a first bill from a vendor in Bill details, with the First bill label beside the vendor name and the note in place of the recent bills list.

2. Create a payment for approved bills

Once bills are approved, they appear under Payments. To create payments:

1. Go to Payments

2. Select the approved bills using the checkboxes

3. Select the vendor

4. Set the Payment processing date

5. Scroll down and click Create payment bundles

6. Review and confirm

7. Click Create

Payment methods

• Default method: Virtual Card
• To change to ACH:
  • Click the item
  • Choose ACH under Payment Requests

Note:

You must have the Manage ACH transfers permission to initiate ACH payments. On PEX Credit accounts this permission is called Pay statement early through ACH.

3. Track payment status

Payments and bills can be monitored here:

• Bills → for creation, approval or rejection
• Payments → for payment bundles, processing and method details
• Reports → for reconciliation and exporting CSV files

Statuses may include:

• Pending approval
• Approved
• In payment bundle
• Processing
• Completed
• Failed

Payment method. Bill history shows a Payment method column after Amount: ACH, Virtual Card or Paid outside PEX. An approved bill that hasn’t been bundled into a payment yet shows a dash. The column also appears on the Bills tab of a vendor’s details page. See Managing your vendors.

When the payment method is ACH and Vendor payment notifications is enabled for your business, PEX emails the vendor when the payment reaches Processing. See Vendor payment notifications.

4. Tips & best practices

• Double-check vendor banking info before creating ACH payments.
• Select the correct vendor for each bill before bundling.
• Use tags for better reconciliation.
• Set payment processing dates before the due date to avoid late payments.
• Maintain adequate funding in your linked external accounts.