Owner paid versus paid from company checkbook

Yep, that sounds about right. To pay bills you have to pay them from bank accounts or credit card accounts.

What you need is an account to do this with. Some kind of offset or suspense account. The balance of which is always zero at the end of the day. Pay the bill out of the offset account and then journal the equity account to the offset account.

A lot of work because QB has "types" of accounts.

You should have said:

Then I went back to the Enter Bills screen and entered a Credit Note for the previously entered vendor in the exact amount and applied this amount to an account called Partner A Contributions.

Next I went into pay bills and applied the credit against the original invoice.

What do you mean what I should have said.

I actually did not do what you said-even if it had the same affect.

Are you trying to be insulting or helpful?

If it had the same effect then why did you say, "That vendor now has a zero balance as it should, but the bills are still out there as "unpaid""? I can assure you if you used the method in my post you would not have a problem.

Just trying to make a boring subject less so. By the way, if I was insulting you would not have to ask.

so instead of "should have said", I take it really meant "try this"?

And yes the vendor shows a zero balance, but the bill itself shows as unpaid. Apparently this is a quirck with quickbooks.

As does 100% of all accounting software products that support Open Item Customers. Until payments and or credits are applied to specific invoices they will always show them as open. To not show them as open would defy logic and sound reasoning.