Vendor Balances, Pay Bills & Print Checks

The Vendors section of the VMX Ledger covers the accounts-payable side of your books: seeing what you owe each vendor (Balances), reviewing what you've paid them (Payments), paying open bills (Pay Bills), and printing the checks (Print Checks). All of these live in the Ledger's slide-out menu, under the Vendors heading.

Availability

The Ledger (including Pay Bills and Print Checks) is enabled per-client by VMX — most stores use QuickBooks instead and will not see a Ledger tab in Admin. If you'd like to discuss using the VMX Ledger, contact help@vmxllc.com.

Within a store that has the Ledger enabled, each user also needs the GL admin permission (managed on the Admin → Permissions page). Some users may additionally be set up as view-only for payments — they'll see a banner reading "View Only: You can view bills but cannot make payments." (or "You can view checks but cannot print them." on Print Checks) and won't have a Pay or Print button.

The Vendors list — history, editing, and adding a vendor

Vendors in the Ledger's slide-out menu lists every vendor with its terms, default expense account, open balance and last activity. Click the vendor's name to open its history: every bill, payment and check for the date range, with a running balance of what you owe. Click the pencil next to the name to edit the vendor record (address, terms, account, 1099 status). Click + New Vendor at the top right to add one; the same form the buyers use under Orders opens, and after you save it you land on the new vendor's page. A vendor you only pay bills to (landlord, insurer, utility) can be marked A/P only on its page so it stays out of the purchasing lists.

Vendor Balances — what you owe each vendor

In Admin, click Ledger, open the slide-out menu on the left, and under Vendors choose Balances.

The Vendor Balances page lists every vendor with an open balance and a grand TOTAL at the bottom.

Click a vendor's name to open their transaction history in the Journal.
Click a vendor's Total amount to jump straight to Pay Bills filtered to that vendor.

For a bill-by-bill breakdown, choose Balances Detail from the menu instead. It lists each vendor's open bills with columns Ref No., Due Date, Original Amount, Open Balance, Discount, and Total, plus a total row per vendor. Under the Ref No. you'll also see the bill's memo and, when the bill came from a purchase order, a PO link with the PO's notes. Click a Ref No. to open the bill itself.

Vendor Payments — what you've paid each vendor

In Admin, click Ledger, open the slide-out menu, and under Vendors choose Payments.

The Vendor Payments report totals what you paid each vendor out of your bank and credit card accounts over a date range (defaults to the current month to date). Click Run after changing the dates. Click a vendor's name to see the individual payments in the Journal.

Pay Bills

In Admin, click Ledger, open the slide-out menu, and under Vendors choose Pay Bills.

At the top of the page, set:
Payment account — the bank or credit card account the payments come out of.
Vendor — leave on All... to see every vendor's due bills, or pick one vendor.
Payment Date — the date that will go on the payments/checks (defaults to today).
Due Date — bills due on or before this date are listed (vendor credits always show). Push this date out to see bills due later.
Starting Check # — pre-filled with the next check number for the selected payment account.
Print later? — check this to record the payments now and print the checks later from the Print Checks page.
Review the bill list. Every bill starts checked; uncheck any you don't want to pay this run. Columns show Payee, Ref No., Due Date, Original Amount, Open Balance, Gross Pay, Discount, and Net Payment.
Adjust the Gross Pay amount on any line to make a partial payment (it defaults to the full open balance).
If a bill has an early-pay discount, the Discount column shows the amount and the checkbox beside it is pre-checked while the discount is still available. Net Payment = Gross Pay minus any discount taken.
The totals row shows how many invoices are selected and the total net payment.
Click Pay.

Early-pay discounts — don't leave the money behind

Some vendors offer a discount for paying early: "2% 10 net 30" means 2% off if you pay within 10 days, with the full amount due at 30. The discount expires long before the bill does.

When any bill on the page carries one, Pay Bills adds a Discount by column showing the last day the discount can be earned, and a banner at the top adds up what's about to lapse:

2 bills lose $37.00 in early-pay discounts within 7 days

Bills whose discount expires within a week are highlighted amber, with "3 days left" or "last day" under the date.
Once the date has passed, it's greyed and struck through, and the discount checkbox is cleared — you can still pay the bill, just not at a discount.
Bills without a discount term show nothing, and the column doesn't appear at all if no bill on the page has one.

The discount dates come from the vendor's payment term (Ledger → Setup → Payment Terms). A vendor with no term set gets no discount date, so if you know a vendor offers early-pay terms and nothing is showing, that's the place to set it.

VMX records one payment per vendor for the selected bills. Unless you checked Print later?, check printing starts immediately — see "Printing checks" below.

Printing checks — confirming the print and saving check numbers

When checks are sent to the printer (from Pay Bills or Print Checks), VMX asks "Did your checks print OK?"

Answer Yes when the checks came out correctly. The check numbers are saved the moment you answer Yes — counting up from your Starting Check #, with the last number remembered on the payment account. If any check paid more bills than fit on the check stub, VMX then offers "Print disbursement pages?" — a detail page listing every bill the check covered, to include with the payment. Print them now or answer No; either way the numbers are already recorded. To print disbursement pages later, open the payment in the Ledger — checks that need them have a Print Disbursement button next to Print Check on the transaction page.
Answer No if there was a printer jam or misprint. VMX then asks "How do you want to proceed?":
Reprint — generates the checks again using the same Starting Check # (fix your printer or check stock first). Since numbers aren't saved until you confirm a good print, the reprint uses the same numbering as the first attempt.
Delete Payments — (offered from Pay Bills) removes the payments entirely, so the bills go back to unpaid and you can start over.

Check numbers are only recorded after you confirm the print succeeded, so a misprint never burns numbers in VMX.

Print Checks — printing payments saved for later

In Admin, click Ledger, open the slide-out menu, and under Vendors choose Print Checks.

This page lists every recorded payment and check that has not yet been assigned a check number — typically payments made in Pay Bills with Print later? checked.

Select the Payment account the checks draw on (and optionally filter by Vendor).
Confirm the Starting Check # — it pre-fills with the next number for the account. Load your check stock in the printer to match.
Every check starts selected; uncheck any you don't want to print in this run. The totals row shows the count selected and the total dollar amount.
Click Print.

After printing, confirm the "Did your checks print OK?" prompt (see "Printing checks" above) so the check numbers get saved.

Pay Bills and Print Checks error messages

"Missing Check Number" — "Please enter a starting check number before printing checks." You clicked Pay (without Print later? checked) or Print with an empty Starting Check # field. Enter the number of the first check loaded in your printer.
"Invalid Check Number" — "Please enter a numeric check number before printing checks." The Starting Check # field contains something other than a number. Enter digits only.
"Invalid Pay Amount" — "Please review your Gross Pay amounts to be sure they are correct." One of the Gross Pay fields on the Pay Bills page isn't a valid number (the bad field is highlighted in yellow). Fix the amount and click Pay again.

Vendor credits on Pay Bills

A vendor credit reduces what you owe that vendor, so it only does something in a payment run when the same vendor also has an open bill for it to come off. A credit sitting alone has nothing on the screen to apply it to.

So Pay Bills hides those by default and tells you it did — the count and total appear above the list, with a Include credits with no offsetting bill checkbox to bring them back.

Nothing is lost by hiding them. An unapplied credit still shows on Reports → A/P Aging, in its own No due date column, which is where you look to see what you're owed. What it stops doing is appearing in a payment run as something you can't actually pay.

Credits have no due date, because nothing is due — you're not the one paying. Their due date column shows a dash rather than a date.

What to do with a credit you can't apply

Three options, and which one depends on the vendor:

Leave it if you still buy from them. It comes off the next bill automatically once one exists.
Ask for a refund if you've stopped buying from them. A credit is only worth something if there's a future purchase to spend it against.
Write it off with a journal entry if the vendor is gone or the amount isn't worth chasing.

A credit that's been sitting for more than a year with no purchases since is usually the second or third case.