Paying instantly when you record a direct payment or quick expense

When you record an expense as a Direct payment or a Quick expense, the payment is now complete the moment you save it. The money leaves the account you chose, dated the day of the expense, not the day someone gets around to signing off on it.

Where to find it

Open Accounting, go to Expenses, and start a new expense. Choose Direct payment or Quick expense as the type. You will see the same account picker as before, the account the money came out of, but there is no longer a separate "Mark as Paid" step afterward. Saving the expense IS the payment.

What "Paid" means here

As soon as you save:

• The expense's status shows Paid.
• The date on that payment is the expense date you entered, not today's date and not whenever a reviewer eventually signs off.
• A balanced entry is posted to your books at the same moment, out of the account you picked in the payment-account field.
• You are never asked how the payment was made. What matters is which account the money came out of, and that is the only thing you choose. The Reference field is still there and still optional: use it for a memo or an invoice number if it helps you, or leave it blank. It has no effect on the payment.

There is nothing left to click afterward. If you open an expense you recorded this way, you will not see a Mark as Paid button, because there is nothing left to mark: it already happened.

If the expense still needs a sign-off

Some expenses still need someone else to sign off before you consider the case fully closed; larger amounts, or ones that follow your property's approval or board-decision rules. That sign-off still happens, but it happens after the money has already moved. See "What the review step means now" for what that sign-off does and does not do.

A saved draft is different

If you save an expense as a draft instead of submitting it, nothing is paid yet. A draft stays a draft. The payment only happens once you submit it for real.

A zero-dollar expense is different too

An expense entered at exactly $0 has no money to move, so it is never marked Paid. It is approved automatically instead, since there is nothing to review or pay.

Vendor bills are unchanged

None of this applies to Vendor bill. A vendor bill still works exactly as it always has: it is logged, it sits in your accounts payable until it is approved, and you record the payment yourself later, on your own schedule, once it is due. Vendor bills never jump straight to Paid. The account picker also drops Accounts Payable as a choice unless you are recording a vendor bill; for a direct payment or quick expense, Accounts Payable was never the right place for the money to have come from, since the money already left a real account.

Expenses you recorded before this change

Any expense that was already sitting at Approved before this change keeps working the old way: it shows a Pay this bill button, which opens the two-way choice between sending the payment through URBI and recording a payment made outside URBI, and you use that button when you actually pay it. This change only affects expenses recorded from now on.