Paying your accounts each month can be painless if you follow some simple rules.

Organising the paperwork is the most important part. We divide our bills into three sections

1. Current Month’s Bills
2. Bills under query
3. Paid Bills

Now you can check the invoices to make sure you received the goods and that the pricing is correct.

1. Take a look at what’s in the query section. Clear up are any queries or discrepancies with your supplier before making payment
2. It’s important to check the invoices received. Take a look at the pricing and quantities received. It’s a good idea to get a statement from each of your suppliers; particularly if you receive multiple invoices. Check the invoices on hand against the supplier statement. Request copies of missing invoices (you wouldn’t want to pay for something you hadn’t received and by law you need to keep a copy on file for seven years)

Now you’re ready to make payment

1. Withhold payment on invoices in dispute (these go into your Bills under query section until resolved)
2. If you’re using accounting software then it’s likely that you can export out a batch payment for import to your bank. You will need business banking software for batch import. It’s not very expensive, saves time and is far more accurate than manually entering payments. Get in touch with your bank to find out more

Finding a bill at a later date depends on your filing method. If you file them in alphabetical order in the month they are dated you shouldn’t have too many problems.

Of course you can do all of this online without printing any documents. It’s all perfectly legal and means that your documents are always at your fingertips. Next month I’ll show you how.