Bills and Payables

Bills are the accounts-payable side of Finance. They capture what your organization owes vendors, route those obligations through your approval chain, and let you pay multiple bills at once through an auditable Payment Run. Paired with Expenses and Recurring Bills, Bills gives your finance team a single view of every outgoing dollar.

How Bills Fit Together

Vendor Bill → Approval → Pay (one-off) or Payment Run (batch)

Surface	What It Does
Bills	The inbox of vendor obligations — pending, approved, scheduled, paid, rejected
Recurring Bills	Templates that auto-generate bills on a cadence (monthly retainers, subscriptions)
Payment Runs	A 4-step wizard that pays a selected batch of approved bills in one operation

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Bills

Viewing Bills

1. Navigate to Finance > Bills
2. The bill list shows every vendor bill with status, amount, vendor, and due date
3. Switch between status tabs (Pending, Approved, Scheduled, Paid, Rejected) or combine filters

Filtering

Filter	Options
Status	Pending, Approved, Scheduled, Paid, Rejected
Due date	All, Overdue, Due this week, Due this month
Search	Vendor, bill number, or reference text

Creating a Bill

You can add a bill in two ways:

Upload a receipt or invoice document

1. Click New Bill
2. Drop the PDF, image, or scanned document
3. Muin extracts the vendor, amount, invoice date, due date, and line items from the receipt
4. Review the extracted data — the review step is mandatory, never skipped
5. Assign a category, add notes, and submit for approval

Manual entry

1. Click New Bill
2. Fill in vendor, amount, date, due date, and category
3. Attach supporting documentation if you have it
4. Submit

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Approval

Approval Flow

Bills follow the same approval chain as other finance documents. A bill in Pending status appears in the approver’s inbox. The approver reviews the amount, category, and attached receipt, then chooses:

• Approve — the bill advances to Approved and becomes eligible for payment
• Reject — the bill returns to the submitter with a rejection reason

Rejected bills are not deleted. The submitter can edit and resubmit, and the full history of submissions, rejections, and approvals is preserved in the audit trail.

Approval Permissions

Approving a bill requires the Finance Process permission. Your organization can route approvals based on:

• Amount thresholds
• Vendor or category
• Department or cost center

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Recurring Bills

What Recurring Bills Do

Recurring Bills are templates that auto-generate a new bill on a cadence (monthly, quarterly, yearly). Use them for:

• Office rent
• Subscription software
• Insurance premiums
• Retainer agreements

Setting Up a Recurring Bill

1. Navigate to Finance > Recurring Bills
2. Click New Recurring Bill
3. Fill in the vendor, amount, category, and cadence
4. Choose the start date and (optionally) an end date
5. Save

The recurring schedule generates the next bill on its own. Generated bills appear in your normal Bills list in Pending status — they still go through your approval chain before payment.

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Payment Runs

Payment Runs let your finance team pay a batch of approved bills in one operation rather than processing each bill individually.

The 4-Step Wizard

Navigate to Finance > Payment Runs and click New Payment Run.

Step	What You Do
1. Select bills	Choose the approved bills to include in the run
2. Funding source	Pick the account or payment method that will fund the run
3. Review	Confirm totals, payment methods, and vendor details
4. Confirm	Submit the run — payments go out and the bills move to Paid

Idempotency

Every Payment Run generates a single idempotency key when the wizard opens. If you refresh the Confirm step or network-retry, the run will not charge twice — the server recognizes the repeated key and returns the original result. This matters most for step 4: it is safe to click Confirm again if you are unsure whether the first click went through.

Draft Persistence

The wizard saves its state as you move between steps. If you close the tab partway through, the next time you open Payment Runs you will see your draft and can resume where you left off. Drafts are per-user — other finance teammates do not see your in-progress run until you confirm it.

Audit Trail

Every Payment Run records:

• Who started the run
• Which bills were included
• The funding source
• The timestamp of each state change
• The idempotency key (for reconciling with your bank statement)

You can review a past run by navigating to Finance > Payment Runs and opening the run from the history list.

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Tips

1. Upload bills as soon as they arrive. Receipt extraction is faster and more accurate with clean, recent uploads.
2. Use Recurring Bills for predictable obligations. Rent, insurance, and software subscriptions should never be entered manually each month.
3. Batch your approvals. Reviewing five bills in a row is faster than reviewing one, then context-switching, then another.
4. Review Payment Runs before confirming. Step 3 is your last chance to catch a miscategorized bill or a vendor with the wrong payment method.
5. Keep vendor details current. An out-of-date ACH routing number is the most common cause of a failed Payment Run.

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Common Issues

Issue	Cause	Solution
Bill stuck in Pending	No approver with the Finance Process permission is assigned	Verify approval routing is configured for this amount or category
Recurring bill did not generate	The schedule end date has passed or the template was deactivated	Review the recurring template’s cadence and active status
Payment Run cannot be started	No bills are in Approved status	Approve at least one pending bill first
Extracted vendor name is wrong	The receipt is handwritten or unusual layout	Edit the extracted fields in the review step before submitting
Rejected bill cannot be resubmitted	The rejection reason is not yet addressed	Read the rejection note, edit the bill, and submit again

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Related Features

• Expenses — Track volunteer- and admin-filed expense reimbursements alongside vendor bills
• Invoices — The accounts-receivable side (money coming in)
• 1099 Tracking — Tax reporting for contractor payments
• Budgets — See how approved bills draw down department budgets

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Need Help?

If bills are stuck in approval or a Payment Run did not complete:

1. Check that the bill has all required fields and an attached document
2. Verify the approver has the Finance Process permission
3. For Payment Run failures, review the funding source and vendor payment details
4. Contact support through the in-app help widget for further assistance