Review unpaid vendor bills by job before month-end

Before month-end, an open-bills report should answer more than “what do we owe?” A construction office also needs to know which job received the work, whether the invoice is approved, and whether a payment has already started outside the system. Review those facts together before using the report for job-cost or cash discussions.

Build a job-level open-bill card

For each unpaid vendor bill, put these fields on one review card:

• Vendor and invoice number.
• Job ID and cost code used in the books.
• Invoice date, due date and amount.
• Approval status and supporting document link.
• Payment status: unpaid, payment proposed, paid but not applied, or exception.
• Reviewer, next action and due date.

This card is an operational control. It does not decide whether an expense is deductible, whether a lien waiver is sufficient, or whether a payment should be released.

Separate bills from cash activity

In QuickBooks Online, bills are used to track amounts owed, while checks and expenses record payments as they occur; the correct workflow depends on what the business is recording.¹ Do not mark a bill paid merely because a superintendent says a check was requested. Link the payment reference only after it is supported.

Illustrative example. The open-bill review shows $38,400: $17,500 for framing on Job C-104, $12,900 for concrete on Job C-107, and $8,000 for equipment rental on Job C-104. The framing invoice is approved but unpaid. The concrete invoice has a payment reference that has not been applied to the bill. The rental invoice lacks a signed approval. The total open balance is useful, but each line needs a different next action.

Use a short review sequence

1. Filter the open-bills report to the cutoff date and export it.
2. Confirm every line has a vendor, invoice reference and job assignment.
3. Compare the bill to its approval and receiving or work-completion evidence where your workflow uses it.
4. Search for payment references, credits and duplicate entries.
5. Assign exceptions before the close, then rerun the report after corrections.

Intuit’s accounts-payable guidance explains that bills can be used to monitor vendor balances.² For job review, retain the job and source-document layer as well; a vendor total cannot show whether costs are landing on the right project.

Investigate bills that remain open after payment

An applied-payment problem can leave a paid bill in an open report. Before changing a status, compare the bill, payment date, bank evidence and the accounting application’s linked transactions. Intuit provides a current troubleshooting path for bills that continue to appear open after payment.³

Connect unresolved items to the invoice approval map and compare approved open costs with the committed-cost bridge. The result is a clean month-end handoff: the project team sees what needs evidence or approval, and bookkeeping sees what needs an accounting correction.