Vendor payment journals

A Vendor payment journal is where you record money paid to vendors and apply it against their open purchase invoices, returns, and prepayments. Unlike a general journal, it is purpose-built for the payment/settlement workflow: it understands vendor accounts, tracks which invoices a payment settles, computes cash discounts, and can auto-settle open invoices for you - all without requiring you to manually balance a debit and credit line yourself.

Prerequisites

• A journal name with Journal type set to Vendor payment. This is what makes it selectable from the Vendor payment journals list; a journal name of any other type won't appear here.
• The vendor being paid must already exist, with any relevant purchase invoices already posted.

Viewing the journal list

Navigate to Accounts payable > Payments > Payment journals.

• Journal status: Filter the list to Unposted, Posted, or All.
• From date / To date: Restrict the list to journals created within a date range.

The grid shows each journal's number, name, description, posted date, creation date, and its aggregate debit/credit totals and status.

Creating a payment journal

1. Select New from the Action Pane. A new row is added to the list with journal number New.
2. In the Name field, select a journal name of type Vendor payment (see Prerequisites). Selecting a name also populates the Description from that journal name's own configuration.
3. Select Save. The journal is assigned its own number (drawn from the journal name's configured voucher series) and status Open, and the Lines button becomes available.

Payment journal details

Open a saved journal (or select it and choose Lines) to reach the Payment journal details page. Its header shows the journal number, description, status, journal name, and created date, and its four tabs cover everything about the journal and its one selected line:

• General - the journal header itself: journal number, journal name, description, status, created/modified dates, and total amount.
• Transactions - the list of payment lines in this journal (see below).
• Payment - payment-specific fields and invoice settlement for the currently selected line.
• Line Details - the full underlying journal-line record for the currently selected line, grouped into General, Amounts, Setup, and Payment fees.

Payment and Line Details are only enabled once exactly one transaction row is selected in the Transactions grid.

The Transactions grid

1. Select Add transaction to create a new payment line. The line is created immediately (it is not a local draft - closing the page does not discard it) with defaults inherited from the journal, ready to edit.
2. Fill in or adjust, either inline in the grid or via the Line Details tab:
   • Date: The transaction date for this line.
   • Account type / Account: Always Vendor for the paying side; select the specific vendor.
   • Description: Optional narrative.
   • Debit / Credit: A vendor payment is normally entered as a Debit (it reduces what you owe the vendor).
   • Offset account type / Offset account: The other side of the entry - typically Ledger, pointing at the bank or cash account the money was paid from.
   • Payment method: The method used to pay the vendor (see the payment method's own configuration for any payment fees that might apply).
   • Currency: Inherited from the vendor account by default; change it if the payment was made in a different currency.
3. With a line selected, Invoice settlement becomes available on the toolbar - see below. Delete removes the selected line(s) entirely.

The bottom summary (Journal transactions) shows the aggregate debit, credit, and balance for the whole journal, plus Budget check results, exactly as on a general journal - see General journals for what these mean.

Settling invoices from a transaction line

With a transaction line selected, choose Invoice settlement (or, equivalently, go to the Payment tab and use its own settlement section) to open the Invoice settlement dialog:

• The header summary shows, for the vendor's account, the Transaction currency, Accounting currency, and Reporting currency amounts side by side - each with its own Amount, Settled, Cash discount, and Available figures. See Cross-rate settlements for exactly how these three currencies are calculated and why they can differ when the invoice and the payment aren't in the same currency.
• The grid below lists the vendor's open invoices, returns, and prepayments: Invoice number, Fully settle (a checkbox that, when ticked, sets Amount to settle to the invoice's full remaining balance), Invoice date, Due date, Cash discount date, Amount in transaction currency, Currency, and Amount to settle (editable - enter a partial amount instead of using Fully settle).
• Selecting a row (or ticking Fully settle) updates the header summary live and reveals a Line details > Cash discount panel below the grid, showing Amount (the cash discount available for this settlement), Taken (already consumed by a prior settlement), and To take (still available) - editable if you want to take less discount than offered.
• Select Apply settlements to commit, or Cancel to discard. The refresh icon reloads the vendor's open invoice list; the wand icon triggers Auto-settle, which allocates the payment across open invoices automatically (oldest first) up to the available amount.

Amounts are negative on the payable side

Purchase invoice amounts and settlement amounts display as negative figures in this dialog (e.g. an invoice's own amount showing -3,500.00, with an amount to settle of -1,000.00) - this mirrors the Accounts payable sign convention, where a liability is recorded as negative until paid down to zero. It does not indicate an error.

Return credits settle against invoices, not against the payment

A return/credit note can appear in the same settlement batch as invoices, but it always nets against an invoice - never directly against the payment line itself. See Cross-rate settlements if the return and the invoice it offsets are in different currencies.

The Payment tab

With a line selected, the Payment tab shows:

• Payment method, Payment reference, Payment amount (read from the line's own debit/credit), Account (the vendor), and Deposit number.
• An Invoice settlement section, listing the vendor's open invoices inline (or No open invoices found for this vendor when there are none) with the same Auto-settle action available from the Invoice settlement dialog.

This is the same settlement data as the Invoice settlement dialog opened from the Transactions grid - just surfaced without leaving the Payment tab.

The Line Details tab

Selecting a transaction line and opening Line Details exposes the underlying journal-line record in four sub-tabs:

• General: Date, Voucher, Description, the Account section (Account type, Account), and the Offset Account section (Offset account type, Offset account).
• Amounts: Debit, Credit, Currency, and Exchange Rate (the rate this line's transaction currency converts to the accounting currency at, frozen once the line is posted - see Cross-rate settlements).
• Setup: Sales Tax Group and Item Sales Tax Group - populate both to trigger automatic tax calculation on this line, the same intersection rule described in Sales tax groups.
• Payment fees: Read-only list of fees this journal line has picked up automatically (Code, Description, Party, Charge type, Amount, Currency, Ledger account), or No payment fees found for this journal line. when none apply. See Payment fees for how a fee gets attached to a line in the first place.

Posting

Once the journal's lines balance (Debit total equals Credit total) and any settlements are applied as intended, select Post from the Action Pane. Posting is irreversible from this page directly - once posted, the journal's status changes and its lines can no longer be edited; use Reverse (under Actions) if you need to undo a posted journal.

Auditing

• Voucher transactions (under Related, from either the list or the details page) opens the full audit trail of General Ledger entries the journal's postings created - one row per ledger account touched, with Debit, Credit, Currency, and (scroll right) Amount in accounting currency, Accounting currency, Amount in reporting currency, Reporting currency, and Posting type (e.g. Ledger journal). This is the same view documented in Voucher transactions.
• From Vendor transactions, selecting the posted invoice or payment row and choosing View settlements shows the settlement from the vendor's own subledger perspective, alongside every other settlement ever applied to that transaction.