Payables

Payables is where money leaves the business on purpose: the vendors you buy from, the bills they send, the runs that pay them, and the aging report that shows what’s still open. It lives in the sidebar as its own module - Overview · Vendors · Purchase orders · Bills · Payments · Aging.

Vendors

Every vendor gets a real page: open balance, overdue amount, payment terms, and an Activity tab - one timeline of the vendor’s bills, purchase orders, expenses and payments, plus the bank transactions tied to them that no bill or expense already shows (a charge categorized straight to an account, or one still in review). Set payment terms (Net 30, due on receipt, end of month) on the vendor and every new bill derives its due date automatically.

A vendor you pay for the first time from the bank feed doesn’t need a trip here first: create it from the transaction itself. See Transactions and categorization.

A vendor statement - what happened over a date range and what’s still open - is one click from the vendor page.

Bills

A bill is a promise to pay. Record it when it arrives (or let a purchase order become one), attach the vendor’s PDF, and the due date drives everything else: the coming-due strip, the overdue alerts, the aging buckets.

Bills at or above your approval threshold hold as drafts until a second person approves them - the same separation of duties as everywhere else money moves.

Recurring bills

For the statements that arrive every month - fuel cards, disposal service, the equipment lease - turn on Make this recurring when you record one. LawnLedger re-creates it on the cadence you pick, as a draft for review (so nothing posts without eyes on it). Manage schedules from Bills → Recurring: pause, resume, or delete without touching the bills already created.

Paying: pay runs

Select the bills to pay and run one pay run - one payment per vendor, covering every selected bill from that vendor.

Payment states

Every vendor payment carries a lifecycle, visible on the Payments desk:

A failed or returned payment reopens its bills automatically and shows up in the notification bell, so nothing quietly stays “paid” that isn’t.

1099-NEC summary

Reports › 1099-NEC Summary builds the year-end contractor worksheet from your books: cash paid to each vendor in a calendar year, who is at or over the threshold, and what paperwork is still missing before you can file.

• What counts - money that moved: bill payments, expenses recorded as paid, and categorized bank withdrawals dated in the year. A bill that was entered but never paid is not compensation. Reversed or voided payments net out.
• Card spend is set aside - anything paid from a credit-card account is the card processor’s to report on Form 1099-K, not yours. It shows on the row so you can see what was excluded, and it does not count toward the threshold.
• The threshold - $600 through tax year 2025; $2,000 for payments made after December 31, 2025 under the 2025 tax law, indexed for inflation after 2026. The report prints the figure it used for the year.
• Readiness - a vendor marked 1099 eligible on their record who is over the threshold needs a TIN (kept as last-4 only) and a W-9 on file. The Before you file list names each gap and opens the vendor. A payee with no vendor record still appears, because that is exactly the payee who needs one.
• The year - the calendar year your date range ends in. Pick any date in the year you are filing for.

Export the CSV for your preparer from the report’s toolbar. Older history that predates the vendor tag on ledger lines is attributed from the source document; rebuild the ledger (Settings › Books) to tag every line.

Vendor credits

A vendor owes you money sometimes - a returned pallet, an overcharge, a damaged delivery. That is a vendor credit: a document that reduces what you owe the vendor without any cash moving yet. Open one from the vendor’s Bills tab.

• Issuing - lines on the expense accounts the original bill hit, with a reference (the vendor’s RMA or credit memo number) and a date. Issuing posts to your books right away: A/P goes down, the expense goes down. On cash basis nothing is recognized until the credit is used.
• Applying - take the credit against one of that vendor’s open bills, in full or in part. The bill owes less and the credit has less left. Nothing posts: your A/P already fell when the credit was issued, so applying only decides which bill it settled. A bill covered in full by credit reads Paid with no payment behind it.
• Credits before cash - a pay run offers the vendor’s open credits first, oldest due bill and oldest credit first, and pays only the remainder. Untick the box to pay in cash and keep the credit for later. The bill itself shows $X in vendor credit available while it is open.
• Refunding - when the vendor sends the money back instead, record a refund against the credit into the account that received it. That posts cash in and A/P back up. On cash basis the refund is the moment the credit hits the P&L.
• Voiding - reverses the issue. Only a credit nothing has touched can be voided; an applied or refunded one stays as the record of what happened.

Where it shows: the vendor’s open balance carries an in credit · net note, the statement lists the credit and any refund as their own lines with an open-credits row under the closing balance, and Aging and the Payables overview print the net after credits beside the gross. The books-health A/P check compares the ledger against open bills less open credits, so a credit never reads as a discrepancy.

Vendor credits are native-only - they are not pushed to QuickBooks.

Aging

Payables → Aging buckets everything open by how long it’s been due - current, 1-30, 31-60, 61-90, 90+ - by vendor, with the bills behind every number one click away. Pick a past “as of” date to see what the books said then.