Overview
Creating bills and expenses is an important part of the DoorLoop experience. These help you properly track real-world bills and expenses in the software. However, the question of which one are you supposed to use comes up every so often and the answer is actually pretty simple.
What is a Bill?
A Bill is basically a document issued by a vendor for products and or services that the buyer purchases. These are normally for items or services that have not been paid yet and are supplied to you on credit. An example of this might be a security company issuing you a bill for services rendered for the month of February that you haven't paid yet.
Bills can only be paid using the property funds that the bill is attached to and they can only be linked to a Vendor.
What is an Expense?
An Expense is for the purchase of goods or services that have already been paid. For example, you go to the store and buy soil with cash. You would enter this as an expense in the system because you already paid for the goods on the spot.
With expenses, these can be paid using an operating account for any property, regardless of if the property has funds or not. Expenses can also be made for tenants, owners, and vendors.
Which one should you use?
You would choose either a bill or an expense, based on the situation. If you are billed by a vendor and haven't yet paid, but plan to pay at a future time, you would enter this as a Bill (using the Create Bill feature). And then at a future time, you would pay the Bill (using Pay Bill). If you purchased goods or had services rendered that you paid for on the spot, then you would enter these as Expenses (using Create an Expense) since they were already paid.
Feature | Bill | Expense |
Definition | A record of money you owe that you plan to pay at a later date. | A payment you’ve already made. |
Payment Status | Unpaid – payment will be recorded in the future. | Paid – expense is recorded at the time of the transaction. |
Use Case | When you receive an invoice from a vendor and will pay later. | When you've already paid for goods or services (e.g., with a card or cash). |
Example | An invoice for maintenance work that you will pay next week. | A utility bill that was auto-paid via bank account. |
Accounting Effect | Increases accounts payable (liability). | Decreases cash or bank balance (asset). |
Workflow | Enter bill → Record payment later. | Enter expense → Done. |
When to Use | You want to track outstanding liabilities and manage due dates. | You are logging a completed payment for accurate bookkeeping. |
Regardless, these are both very similar terms that in the end, do roughly the same thing once they're paid and record the purchase of goods and services.
Next Steps