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Bills & Accounts Payable

Managing Your Bills and Accounts Payable

The Bills feature helps you track all your recurring expenses, ensuring you never miss a payment and always know what's due when.

What are Accounts Payable?

In Cognito Money, "Accounts Payable" or "Bills" represent any regular payment obligation you have, such as:

  • Monthly subscriptions (Netflix, Spotify, etc.)
  • Utility bills (electricity, water, internet)
  • Rent or mortgage payments
  • Insurance premiums
  • Credit card minimum payments
  • Loan installments
  • Annual memberships or subscriptions
How to Access Bills

You can access the Bills management page in two ways:

  1. Click on Bills in the main navigation menu
  2. Click the Add Bill button in the top button bar

Step-by-Step Guide to Adding a Bill
  1. Navigate to the Bills page and click Add Account Payable button
  2. Fill in the required information:
    • Subscription Name: Enter a descriptive name for the bill (e.g., "Netflix Subscription")
    • Amount: Enter the payment amount
    • Category: Select an appropriate category (this helps with budget tracking)
    • Billing Cycle: Choose either "Monthly" or "Yearly"
    • Start Date: Select when the subscription begins or when you first started paying for it
    • End Date: (Optional) If the subscription has a known end date, enter it here. Leave blank for ongoing subscriptions
    • Next Payment Date: Select when the next payment is due
    • Description: (Optional) Details about what this bill covers
    • Notes: (Optional) Any additional information about this bill
    • Vendor URL: (Optional) Add the website where you make the payment
    • Link to Income Source: (Optional) Connect this bill to a specific income source for budget tracking
  3. Click Save to add the bill to your accounts payable
Understanding Date Fields

The bill form includes several important date fields that serve different purposes:

  • Start Date: This establishes when the subscription or bill began. It's used for calculating how long you've had the service and for proper placement on the payment timeline.
  • End Date: This is optional and should only be used for subscriptions with a fixed termination date (like an annual membership that won't auto-renew). For ongoing subscriptions, leave this blank.
  • Next Payment Date: This indicates when your next payment is due and determines when payment reminders appear. After each payment, this date automatically advances based on your billing cycle.
Tip:

For bills that vary in amount each month (like utilities), enter an average or estimated amount. You can update it when you receive the actual bill.

The Bills Dashboard

The Bills dashboard provides you with an overview of your recurring payments:

  • Monthly Cost: Total of all your monthly bills
  • Yearly Cost: Total of all your yearly bills
  • Total Monthly Equivalent: All your bills converted to a monthly amount
Bill Status Indicators

Each bill in your list will have one of these status indicators:

  • Active - The bill is active and will be included in your expenses
  • Inactive - The bill is inactive (temporarily paused or cancelled)
  • Due today - Payment is due today
  • Overdue - Payment is past due
  • Coming up - Payment is due soon
  • Paid - The bill has been paid for the current period
Bill Actions

For each bill, you can perform these actions:

  • Activate/Deactivate - Toggle the bill's active status
  • Mark as Paid - Manually mark a bill as paid
  • Edit - Modify the bill details
  • Delete - Remove the bill completely

How Bill Payment Tracking Works

Cognito Money offers two ways to track bill payments:

1. Automatic Detection

When you record a transaction that matches one of your bills (by name or description), Cognito Money automatically marks that bill as paid. This works when:

  • The transaction description contains the bill name
  • The transaction amount matches or is close to the bill amount
  • The transaction date is within a reasonable window of the bill's due date
Tip:

To improve automatic detection, make sure your transaction descriptions include the bill name. For example, use "Netflix Payment" instead of just "Subscription".

2. Manual Marking

You can also manually mark a bill as paid by clicking the button next to any bill in your list. This is useful for:

  • Cash payments that don't have a transaction record
  • Payments made from accounts not tracked in Cognito Money
  • Cases where automatic detection doesn't work correctly
Next Payment Date Calculation

When a bill is marked as paid (either automatically or manually), the next payment date is automatically updated based on the billing cycle:

  • Monthly bills: The next payment date is set to one month after the current due date
  • Yearly bills: The next payment date is set to one year after the current due date

The system also takes into account the optional End Date:

  • If an End Date is specified and the next calculated payment would fall after this date, the bill will be automatically marked as completed
  • If no End Date is specified (most common case), the bill will continue indefinitely until you manually deactivate it

Understanding Bill Visualizations

The Bills page includes visual representations of your accounts payable to help you understand your recurring expense patterns:

Monthly Cost Distribution Pie Chart

This chart shows how your monthly bills are distributed across different services or categories. It helps you identify:

  • Which bills take up the largest portion of your monthly expenses
  • The relative proportion of each bill compared to others
  • Areas where you might want to consider cost-cutting
Monthly vs. Yearly Bar Chart

This chart compares your monthly subscription costs to the monthly equivalent of your yearly subscriptions. This visualization helps you:

  • Understand the balance between your monthly and yearly payment obligations
  • See the true monthly cost of all your subscriptions when yearly ones are broken down
  • Plan your monthly budget more effectively by accounting for amortized yearly costs
Tip:

Use these visualizations to identify opportunities for saving money. Look for overlapping services or subscriptions you rarely use that might be candidates for cancellation.

Tips for Effective Bill Management
  1. Be comprehensive - Add ALL your recurring bills, even small ones that might seem insignificant
  2. Be precise with due dates - Set the exact payment due date to avoid late fees
  3. Use consistent naming - Name your bills in a way that matches how they appear in your transaction history
  4. Review regularly - Check your Bills dashboard weekly to stay aware of upcoming payments
  5. Batch your bills - When possible, try to align payment dates to fall around the same time to simplify budgeting
  6. Include vendor URLs - Add the payment website link to make it easy to quickly make payments
  7. Set up reminders - Use the Reminders feature to get notifications before bills are due
  8. Audit annually - Once a year, review all subscriptions to identify ones you no longer use or need
Subscription Management Strategy

To keep your subscription costs under control:

  • Consider rotating entertainment subscriptions instead of having them all active at once
  • Look for annual payment options that offer discounts compared to monthly billing
  • Share family plans where appropriate to reduce per-person costs
  • Set a "subscription budget" and stick to it - if you add a new one, consider cancelling another
  • Use the monthly equivalent view to understand the true cost of all your subscriptions

Common Issues and Solutions
Problem: Bills aren't being automatically marked as paid
Solutions:
  1. Make sure your transaction descriptions include the bill name
  2. Verify that the transaction amount is similar to the bill amount
  3. Check that the transaction date is within a reasonable window of the bill's due date
  4. If automatic detection still doesn't work, use the manual mark as paid button
Problem: Next payment date isn't updating correctly after payment
Solutions:
  1. Make sure the bill has been properly marked as paid
  2. Edit the bill and manually update the next payment date
  3. Verify that the billing cycle (monthly/yearly) is set correctly
Problem: Monthly total seems incorrect
Solutions:
  1. Check if any inactive bills are being included in the calculation
  2. Verify that all monthly bills have the correct billing cycle selected
  3. Make sure all bill amounts are entered correctly
Problem: Bill disappeared from active bills list
Solutions:
  1. Check if you set an End Date that has now passed
  2. Look in the inactive bills section to see if it was deactivated
  3. Verify that the bill wasn't accidentally deleted
  4. If needed, create a new bill with the correct date parameters