Creating and approving a bill
Entering a bill and the approval gate before it can be paid.
A bill has a vendor, an issue date and due date, line items (description, quantity, unit price, tax), and an optional project. Totals recalculate as you edit lines, the same way invoice and estimate totals do.
Approval gate
A bill can't have a payment recorded against it until it's Approved. A bill entered by an Owner or Admin is Approved immediately — there's no draft or submit step at all, since they already have the authority to approve it. A bill entered by the Billing role goes through a gate first, since Billing can enter and submit a bill but can't approve their own entry — a deliberate separation of duties:
- Draft — being entered or corrected.
- Awaiting approval — submitted by the Billing-role user who entered it.
- Approved — an Owner or Admin signs off.
- Rejected — an Owner or Admin sends it back with a note explaining why. It stays editable; the moment it's corrected and saved, it moves back to Draft — with the rejection note still showing until it's submitted again — ready for the same Draft → Awaiting approval → Approved path.
An Owner can turn the gate off for bills entered by the Billing role under Settings → Expenses & bills. With it off, a Billing-role bill is also Approved the moment it's created — no submit or approve step at all, the same way an Owner or Admin's own bills already are. A bill approved this way can still be corrected afterwards: if the Billing role edits it, the edit saves but the bill goes back to Draft, ready to be approved again before it can be paid. An Owner or Admin editing it doesn't trigger this — they already have approval authority, so their edit doesn't need re-approving.
Attachments
Attach the vendor's own invoice or receipt to a bill the same way you attach files to an invoice or estimate — drag and drop, or choose a file. On a phone or tablet, a Take a photo button opens your device's camera directly, so you can snap a paper receipt on the spot. Bill attachments are internal only; they're never visible through the client portal.