How to Fix a Bill Payment Recorded as an Expense in QuickBooks Online

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A really common misstep people make when using QuickBooks Online is to accidentally record bills as both a bill and an expense. 

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to fix this so your books are correct.

Quick Instructions:

  1. Open the Expense
  2. Click the Add link to the right to convert the Expense to a Bill Payment
  3. Click the Save and Close button

Keep reading for a complete walkthrough with screenshots:

Fixing Bills Entered as Expenses

Here’s an example where I have a Hubdoc bill that was also entered as an expense:

Finding a bill entered as an expense in a Transaction Report in QuickBooks Online.

In this example, I noticed Office Expenses was too high in my Profit and Loss. I clicked on Office Expenses to view the Transaction Report above.

To fix this I can click on the expense in the Transaction Report.

In the upper right corner of the Expense click the Add link. 

Adding a bill payment from an expense in QuickBooks Online.

This will replace the expense with a Bill Payment. From here, click the Save and Close button.

Expense turned into a Bill Payment in QuickBooks Online.

Another way you might find a bill entered as an expense is to click Expenses -> Vendors in the left side menu.

Navigating to Vendor expenses in QuickBooks Online.

Click on or search for a vendor and in the expenses list you’ll see the bill & expense.

Here’s my Hubdoc example:

Bill entered as an expense in the Expenses vendors list in QuickBooks Online

Like above, click on the expense. Click Add to convert it to a Bill Payment, then click Save and Close.

Here you can see an example where that’s been done and I now have a Bill and Bill Payment.

Bill and Bill Payment in expenses in QuickBooks Online.

You now know how to fix a bill entered as both a bill and expense in QuickBooks Online.

☕ If you found this helpful you can say “thanks” by buying me a coffee… https://www.buymeacoffee.com/gentlefrog

Below are videos if you prefer to watch a walkthrough.

If you have any questions about fixing errors like this in QuickBooks Online click the green button below to schedule a free consultation.

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6 Responses

    1. Hi Jeff,
      If you don’t see the “add” on the right then there’s no bill to attach to this expense. You may have something else going on. You can schedule a 15-minute meeting with Rachel and the two of you can take a look at it together and figure out what’s going on: https://www.gentlefrog.com/meeting/

      -Jess

  1. I have made a mistake and entered bills as expenses and it is a load of work, now when I upload the bank it duplicates my transactions, pls help me change the expenses to bills?

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Are you a small business owner struggling to make sense of your QuickBooks data?

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  • Save time and money by streamlining your bookkeeping process and reducing errors.

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