What are bills payable?

Bills payable can be defined in three ways:

• Bills payable can be the funds that a bank borrows from other banks. These are typically due in the very short term and are used to provide liquidity to the receiving bank.
• Bills payable can be short-term notes issued by a business that are due on demand or by a specific date. The duration of these forms of indebtedness tends to be quite short.
• Bills payable can be the same as accounts payable, which are usually comprised of invoices from suppliers that are received and recorded by a business within the current liabilities section of the balance sheet.

Bills payable is an older term, and is more commonly found in the English system of accounting than the American system.

Similar Terms

Depending upon usage, bills payable is also known as accounts payable,  trade payables, and notes payable.

Related Topics

Automated payables matching
Clean the vendor master file
The invoice approval process
Invoices with no invoice number
The payment factory