Paying Rent & Utilities

I am still fairly new to QuickBooks so my questions may be basic. I have QuickBooks Pro 2009.

When making a payment such as rent, should I use "Write Checks" or "Enter Bills"? I don't actually get a bill for rent, so I'm thinking I should just "Write Checks", but the Coach Tips says, "Record your non-inventory bills, such as rent and utilities" for Enter Bills.

On the other hand, I do get a bill for utilites, so I assume that I should use "Enter Bills", right?

When I look at my Checking Register, my rent transaction (having used "Write Checks") shows the Account as "Rent Expense", but my utility transaction (having used "Enter Bills") just shows "Accounts Payable". This seems odd to me. Why not show my utility transaction Account as "Utilities"?

Dean

Either method gets the bill paid....One method takes 1 step while the other takes 2. Your choice..

When to use bills...if you need to record a bill so that you can be reminded to pay it in the future or need to recognize the expense in the current month but won't be paying it until next month (accrual based company) then record the bill. If you get a bill from your utiliy company, leave it on your desk for a couple of days and then just pay it, then just use write checks to keep things simple. Intuit's "record everything as a bill and then pay the bill" method causes more work and confusion.

What you see in the register are the payments and how they were recorded. When you use a bill, the bill is posted to Utilities. Your payment is posted to Accounts payable. (remember, this is a 2 step process). When you use Write Checks the check is posted to utilities (or rent) because it was a 1 step process. In either case, the expense is recognized