Purchases, suppliers and their payments

The purchases section in Accounting tracks what you buy from suppliers and the obligations and payments that follow. It suits straightforward accounting purchases; if you run a full procurement cycle with requests and goods receipts, that belongs in the separate Purchasing module.

Suppliers

The Suppliers card lists who you buy from, as in image 1: name, contact details and the balance owed to each.

A supplier here is a contact holding the supplier role. If one is missing from a selection list, it is usually because the contact was never given that role — see the contacts and contact roles article.

Purchase bills

The Purchases card lists purchase bills, as in image 2. To record one press Add, which opens the page in image 3: supplier, date, the supplier's own invoice number, the lines with their prices, quantities and taxes, then the totals.

On save the entry is created: purchases or an expense on the debit side, the suppliers account on the credit side, with tax if any.

Purchase payments

The Purchase Payments card — image 4 — records what you paid a supplier against their bills: amount, payment method, date and the related bill. The supplier's balance falls by what was paid, and the remainder shows in the payables aging report.

The right order of work

1. Create the contact with the supplier role.
2. Record the purchase bill with its real date and the supplier's invoice number.
3. Record the payment when money actually leaves, not when payment is promised.
4. Review payables aging weekly to see what is coming due.

A common warning

Never record the same bill twice — once as an expense bill and once as a purchase — because that doubles both the expense and the liability. Pick one path per kind of buying and stick to it: operating expenses through expense bills, goods and materials through purchases.