Post committed spend when a purchase order is submitted

Committed-spend billing puts the money you've committed to suppliers into your books the moment you submit a purchase order — instead of waiting weeks for the supplier's invoice. Each submitted order gets a committed-spend bill that tracks whatever hasn't been invoiced yet, shrinks automatically as real supplier invoices arrive, and disappears once the order is fully billed. Use it when your accountant plans cash flow from your accounting file and open purchase orders would otherwise be invisible there.

Before you begin

• You need access to Settings and permission to manage purchase orders.
• To see committed spend in your accounting provider, your accounting integration must be connected and syncing bills. The bills work inside SKU either way.
• Recommended: map a Committed Purchases account under Settings → Ledger → Nominal code mappings so committed spend posts to its own line in your ledger instead of Accrued Purchases.

Turn on committed-spend billing

1. Go to Settings → Purchasing → Invoicing & Bills.

2. Find the Bill Creation Policy card.

3. Under When does a purchase order produce a bill?, choose When the purchase order is submitted (committed-spend billing).

   

4. Click Save.

From now on, every purchase order you submit creates a committed-spend bill automatically. Draft orders are not affected — only submitting triggers it.

Submit a purchase order and see the committed bill

1. Open a purchase order — for example PO-DOCS-0001 for Acme Supplies — and click Submit.

2. Confirm in the Send dialog. This emails the order to your supplier, exactly as it always has.

   

3. Go to Orders → Purchase Invoices. A new bill named after the order (for example PROV-PO-DOCS-0001) appears with a Committed badge, valued at the order's full unbilled amount.

   

Committed-spend bills are managed for you. Their edit, delete, archive, and payment actions are disabled — the bill follows the purchase order, and you never maintain it by hand.

Record the real supplier invoice — nothing special required

When the supplier's actual invoice arrives, record it the way you always do (manually, by import, or from an emailed PDF). The committed-spend bill notices and adjusts on its own.

1. From the order, click Invoice (or use Record supplier invoice on the committed bill). A notice confirms the committed bill will reduce automatically.

   

2. Save the invoice. The committed bill immediately shrinks to what's still unbilled.

   

   In this example the supplier invoiced $212.50 of a $985.00 order, so the committed bill restated itself to $772.50. Once invoices cover the whole order, the committed bill removes itself — your books then hold only the real supplier invoices.

The committed bill also keeps up when the order itself changes: reducing quantities, short-closing a line, applying a vendor credit, or canceling the order all update or remove it automatically.

Focus the list on committed bills — or hide them

The Purchase Invoices list has a Committed switch next to the archived filter:

• All shows real invoices and committed bills together.
• Hide shows only real supplier invoices.
• Only isolates the committed bills — a live view of everything submitted but not yet invoiced.

Turn it off

1. Return to Settings → Purchasing → Invoicing & Bills.

2. Set the policy back to When the supplier invoice is recorded (default) and click Save.

3. A confirmation states exactly how many committed bills will be removed and their total value. Click Remove and save to proceed, or Cancel to keep the policy on.

   

Removing committed bills reverses their ledger entries and voids the matching bills in your accounting provider. Real supplier invoices are never touched.

Next steps

• Create a purchase order
• Record a supplier invoice
• Map a Committed Purchases account under Settings → Ledger → Nominal code mappings

Video transcript

Committed-spend billing puts supplier commitments into your books the moment you submit a purchase order. Turn it on under Settings, Purchasing, Invoicing and Bills. Choose "when the purchase order is submitted", and save. Now submit an order as usual — we'll send this one to Acme Supplies. The moment it's submitted, a committed-spend bill appears beside your real invoices, badged and valued at the order's full unbilled amount. It's managed for you — it can't be edited, paid, or deleted. When the supplier's real invoice arrives, record it normally. The committed bill shrinks to whatever is still unbilled, and disappears once the order is fully invoiced. Use the Committed switch to isolate or hide these bills any time. And if you turn the policy off, a confirmation tells you exactly what will be removed before anything changes.