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A bookkeeping client asked whether he should pay his supplier from the invoice, or the statement.

As bookkeepers we always say pay from the invoice - NEVER pay from the statement.

Why not pay from a statement?
When you always pay from an invoice, then there’ll be no risk of wondering whether you’ve paid that invoice or not - and when your bookkeeper comes to enter the data into the accounting software package, be it MYOB or Quickbooks, the bookeeper will know what you’ve paid and waht you haven’t.

When you receive a statement, it may list invoices that you have since paid, and you could end up paying them twice.

But surely the supplier would tell you that you’ve paid the invoice twice. Maybe, or maybe not.

By sticking to the rule of always paying from an invoice, and never a statement, you can see what the invoice relates to, and you’ll know what the GST component is.

Surely the GST is always 10%?
Not necessarily. Take a food outlet, such as a cafe. The onwer buys unprepared food that is free of GST from a supplier, such as milk - and there’s also packets of biscuits included in the order which are inclusive of GST

What’s the statement for?
The supplier will send out a statement advising you of which invoices have been paid and which are outstanding in that reporting period.

Nothing wrong with attaching the invoices that you are going to pay, and put them with the statement - as long as you ensure that the amount you pay is not the amount requested on the statement, but the total amount of the invoices that are attached to that statement.

When cash flow is tight, you want to do everything you can to ensure that you are not paying invoices twice - and one way of doing that is never to pay from a statement.