# Introduction - Bills

A bill is a vendor invoice: something you owe and have not yet paid.

**Video coming soon:** Entering a bill, opening it, and watching it become a payable.

It is the mirror image of a customer invoice, and it is the document that creates a payable. Until a bill exists, no purchase appears in what you owe.

![The Bills screen listing forty-two bills with columns for Bill Date, Bill Number, Order Number, Vendor, Due Date, Status, Total Amount and Balance. Statuses read Paid, Open, Partially Paid or a red Overdue by N days. Balance falls to 0.00 on the paid rows.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/bills/bill-list.png)

*Amount is what the vendor charged. Balance is what is still outstanding on it.*

## The line that draft crosses

A draft bill is a note to yourself. An open bill is a liability with a due date. Everything strict about this module starts the moment you open one.

1. **Draft**: Entered, posts nothing
2. **Open**: Payable created
3. **Partially paid**: Some settled
4. **Paid**: Cleared in full

> **Warning:**
>
> **Draft bills post nothing**
>
> A bill sitting in draft does not appear in payables, on your balance sheet or in any report. If your costs look low, check for bills still sitting in draft before looking anywhere else.

## Where bills come from

- **From a purchase order** (the good route): Copies the lines and gives you the ordered, received and billed comparison for free.
- **From scratch** (ad hoc): A blank form. Fine for costs nobody ordered, such as a professional fee.
- **From a recurring profile** (contractual): Generated on a schedule, always as a draft.
- **Migrated** (one-off): Brought across in bulk when you move onto SorviAI Finance. There is no self-service bill import afterwards; day-to-day bills are entered or converted from an order.

## Bill or expense

A bill is unpaid, an expense is paid. If you are choosing between them, the only question is whether the money has already left. Everything else about the two documents follows from that.