Deleting a bill and categories for transactions

Priscilla

Hello there,

I am new to WaveApps and run my own small business. I am not very confident with Accounting but working with Waveapps is making it more enjoyable.
(Thanks to the team for the wonderful software. )

I would like advise please.

1. Is it best to set up all purchases as individual Vendors the match the Transactions from my linked bank account to the Vendors?
2. I am confused about the categories, when I go into Accounts and Transactions, I see all the debits from my linked bank account but I need to then assign it to a category so if I choose 'Payment Sent for Bill in Wave' does this mean I need to have created a bill to link the transaction to?
3. I have done the above, I have set up Bill in Wave for £80.52 for the AirBnB vendor but now I seem to have two transations for £80.52

I hope my questions make sense, I am sure my inexperience is showing but I also know that with the support of the wonderful community I will be on my way to balancing accounts in no time.

PS. I am also unable to delete the Bills I have created, I drop down the little arrow next to the Bill but I do not see delete as an option.

Samd

Hey @Priscilla, and welcome

1. That depends on how thoroughly you want to account. It would be a good way to track everywhere you spend money, but it's likely you're also going to need to track one-off expenses as well. Say you need to run to a specific petrol station for fuelling up for a travel expense, you could just use the preset expense categories in Wave (or create your own via Accounting > Chart of Accounts) rather than needing to also set up this station as a vendor.

2. Yep! Although not every transaction necessarily needs a bill. To use the example above, you could just categorize the transaction as 'Travel Expense', or 'Advertising fees', or make categories that pertain more to your day-to-day business. Bills in Wave is more of a way of tracking expenses that you'd process more regularly (i.e. rent, internet, phone bills, etc). But it's totally optional.

There is one big difference between using a bill or just recording an expense. In the latter option, your reports will show the expense as incurred on the date you set it to. So if you pay for a phone on May 1st, your report shows the phone paid as May 1st.

However, with a bill, you are indicating you will owe something in the future. And because Wave is accrual based, anything owed during a certain period will count as an expense. This can be helpful if you are trying to look ahead to see, for instance, how much your operating expenses may be for September. As long as you've created bills due in September, this will show in your reports as expenses in Accounts Payable.

3. Thanks for sending the screenshot! It looks like what happened here is the bill was also marked as paid on April 3rd. What I'd recommend doing is deleting that transaction, and then heading to the duplicate on April 8th. This appears to be when the bill was actually paid. You should now be able to categorize this as 'Payment sent for a bill in Wave', and then the specific bill. Before you deleted the transaction on April 3rd, this bill will not have shown up when categorizing, as to the system it appears to be closed out. Thus going forward, after creating a bill, leave the bill as unpaid until the expense transaction is imported into Wave, which you can then categorize/link up with the bill.

In terms of deleting, you'll only be able to delete unpaid bills in Wave. If for any reason you do need to delete a paid bill, head over to Accounting > Transactions and either delete the paying transaction (if you need it to disappear), or categorize it elsewhere so that the bill shows as unpaid once more.