The accounts payable module in DualEntry manages the full vendor spend lifecycle: from receiving a bill through payment and reconciliation. Every AP transaction flows through to the general ledger in real time, so your trial balance always reflects current liabilities.
Bill lifecycle
Bills are the core record in AP. You can enter them manually, upload via OCR, or create them from purchase orders. Each bill passes through a configurable approval workflow before posting. Once posted, the bill creates a payable that appears in your aging and cash flow projections.
DualEntry also supports recurring bills for predictable vendor charges like rent, subscriptions, and retainers. The system generates draft bills on the schedule you define, ready for review and approval.
Line-item coding on each bill drives your segment reporting. You assign an account from the chart of accounts and optional classification dimensions (department, project, location) to every line. Accurate coding at this stage means your departmental P&L and project-level reports stay meaningful without manual reclassification later.
When a bill is no longer valid, you void it rather than deleting it. Voiding creates a reversing entry that zeroes out the original posting while preserving the full audit trail. See bill management for details on the complete bill lifecycle.
Paying vendors
The vendor payments workflow lets you pay one or many bills in a single run. You choose from ACH, paper check, or wire transfer, and you can apply vendor credits and prepayments to reduce the amount due before remitting. Payment approval workflows add a second layer of control over cash disbursements.
Every vendor payment is tied to the approved bills, credits, or journal entries it settles. A payment can’t exceed the total it applies, and it can’t carry an extra fee or adjustment line. That keeps every dollar paid to a vendor traceable to an approved record. A reviewer can see fees apart from what you actually paid the vendor, and an overpayment can’t slip into the books unnoticed. This is why the two sides of DualEntry behave differently. Extra money received from a customer stays on their account as a credit. Extra money paid to a vendor would leave the business with no bill behind it, so DualEntry doesn’t allow it. If a card or bank charge includes a processing fee on top of the bill, record the fee on its own expense record. See how to record a card payment with a processing fee.
For check payments, DualEntry integrates with paper check printing so you can print immediately, queue checks for a batch run, or record a manually written check. Partial payments are also supported: you can pay less than the full bill amount, and DualEntry tracks the remaining balance in your aging.
Posted payments flow into reconciliation as expected outflows. When the corresponding bank transaction clears, DualEntry matches it automatically or presents it for manual review. See vendor payments for the full process.
Purchase orders
Purchase orders give you pre-commitment visibility into upcoming spend. You record what you agreed to buy, receive against the order as goods arrive, and create the bill from the PO when the vendor invoices you. DualEntry keeps the link between the three records, so spend traces from commitment through payment.
A purchase order tracks how much of its value has been billed, as unbilled, partially billed, or billed. Filtering the PO list on partially billed is how you find orders where billing and receiving have diverged, which is worth doing at period end.
Comparing the invoice against the order and the receipt is a review you perform rather than a control DualEntry enforces. There is no automated three-way match and no tolerance setting that blocks approval, so put that check in the bill’s approval workflow if you need it enforced.
Open PO commitments also represent future spend obligations, giving your treasury team advance notice of upcoming disbursements. See purchase orders for the full reference.
1099 reporting
If you pay U.S.-based independent contractors or other 1099-eligible vendors, the 1099 tracking tools help you classify vendors, accumulate qualifying spend, and generate the data you need for year-end filing.
You tag vendors with their IRS 1099 category (NEC for nonemployee compensation, MISC for rents and royalties, and so on), and DualEntry automatically accumulates qualifying payments throughout the calendar year. At year-end, you generate a report that compiles totals by vendor and box code, ready for export and filing.
Mid-year review is just as important as year-end generation. Running the 1099 summary report quarterly helps you catch missing TINs, miscategorized vendors, and payment totals that are approaching the filing threshold. See 1099 tracking for step-by-step instructions.
Last modified on September 25, 2026
