Partial Payment of Vendor Invoice

You might occasionally have a vendor invoice that you are paying over a period of time. There are a few different ways to record the fact that the invoice is due, and you are paying it off.

Two different approaches are:

a. This option is best used when you know the exact amounts you will be paying on each check. You will have the benefit of being able to see the current outstanding amounts and due dates every time you go to Batch Print Checks. In this case, you would use the Post and Print Later option in Expense and Ledger to create a series of checks for the vendor’s invoice.
b. This option is better suited for invoices/leases that will be paid off over a long period of time and might have a varying payment amount. Here you would create a General Ledger liability account for the amount due, and then post checks against the liability account.

Option a: Post and Print Later

In this example, the vendor billed $900 and you are paying $300 each month on the 15th of the month for the next three months.

1. You could Issue check to a vendor as a series of Post and Print Later checks. Each check would have its own due date. The print date of the checks would determine the expense date on the books if you are on cash basis. If you are on accrual basis, the post date on the check determines the date of the expense.
2. When you are ready to print a check for the vendor in the Expense and Ledger screen, go to Functions> Batch Print Checks and select the checks to be printed. You may click on the “payable to” column header to sort by vendor to see what is outstanding. Select and print the desired check, leaving the others for the future date.

Option b: Creating a liability account and writing checks against it.

In this example you have an invoice with such a large number of payments that it is essentially a Payment of a Loan through a Vendor, and can be processed as such.