Paying several bills at once
Paying twenty bills used to mean opening twenty bills. There is now a single run that takes a list of approved bills, asks how they should be paid once, and pays them all. Starting a run There are...
Last updated
Paying twenty bills used to mean opening twenty bills. There is now a single run that takes a list of approved bills, asks how they should be paid once, and pays them all.
Starting a run
There are two ways in, and they only differ in what is ticked when you arrive.
Pay Bills, at the top of the Expenses tab, opens the run with nothing ticked and every payable bill listed.
Expenses
| Pay Bills | Opens the run with every payable bill listed. |
Or tick the bills you want on the Expenses list first and choose Pay selected from the bar that appears at the bottom. The run then opens with exactly those ticked.
| 3 selected | Pay selected Export selected Clear |
Export selected hands you a spreadsheet of exactly what is ticked, which is useful when somebody who cannot log in needs to see what is about to be paid before it is.
Choosing the bills and the amounts
Every bill in the list has its own amount, filled in with what is still owed. Change any of them to pay part of a bill in this run, exactly as you would on a single bill.
| Northline Mechanical Ltd. | $9,940.00 |
| Cascade Elevator Service | $4,390.00 |
| Brightpath Landscaping | $1,280.00 |
Continue · $15,610.00
A bill that cannot be paid right now is still listed, greyed, with the reason next to it, so you can see why rather than wondering where it went.
Choosing how they get paid
The run asks once, and the answer applies to every bill in it.
- Send through URBI moves the money for each bill to its vendor.
- Cheque prints a batch of cheques, one per vendor, after the run finishes. See Printing a batch of cheques.
- Record payments made outside URBI logs a batch of payments that already happened.
You also pick the account the money comes from, once, for the whole run.
Watching it run, and reading the result
The run shows each bill resolving as it goes, then a summary of what happened.
| Northline Mechanical Ltd. | Paid | $9,940.00 | View bill |
| Cascade Elevator Service | Skipped | $4,390.00 | View bill |
| Brightpath Landscaping | Failed | $1,280.00 | View bill |
Three outcomes, and each says why:
- Paid. The payment is on the books and, on the send path, the money is moving.
- Skipped. Nothing was attempted, and the row says what stopped it. The commonest reason is that somebody else paid the bill while the run was going.
- Failed. The payment was attempted and did not go through. The row carries the reason, and Retry the failed bill starts a fresh run for just that one. There is also a Retry all failed bills button when more than one failed.
View bill on any row opens that bill, so a result you want to look into is one click away.
A run's result page keeps its own address. Reloading it, or coming back to it later, shows the same result rather than starting over.
Things worth knowing
- A bill is never paid twice by a run. If a bill was settled between building the list and the run reaching it, that bill is skipped and says so.
- Retrying a run resumes it. It does not start a second run and does not re-pay anything that already went through.
- Nobody is emailed by a run. The vendor's usual payment notice still happens on the send path, exactly as it does for a single bill; the run itself sends nothing extra.
Related articles
- Releasing a bill for payment, for paying one bill, including partial amounts.
- Printing a batch of cheques, for the cheque path.