Paying vendors — the payment run
Vendors are paid in runs: one person proposes what is due, another approves, the money goes with its UTR, the books and the bills follow; advances, debit notes and failed payments have their own doors.
Payables → Payments is where money leaves. A payment run is the batch the bank pays on one day.
Propose a run picks every approved bill due by a date — MSME vendors first (their 45-day clock is a legal liability), then the oldest due — within a ceiling if you give one, and folds them into one payment per vendor. Nothing is paid yet. Approve is somebody else: the run refuses if any vendor to be paid by transfer has no bank account on record (Vendors tab, the two-person bank account). Paid is the day the money went: enter each payment's UTR or cheque number; each payment posts its journal (vendor payables against the bank) and the bills it covers are marked paid.
The bank file. *Bank file* writes the run in the bulk-upload column order of your bank's portal (HDFC, ICICI, SBI are set up; the accountant edits the column order to match the sheet the bank actually gives you). Advices mails each vendor what was paid, against which bills, with the TDS held back and the reference — by hand, once the run is paid.
A payment that failed — the bank bounced it, the cheque was stopped — is failed with the reason: its journal reverses and the bills owe again, so the next run picks them up.
An advance to a vendor is a payment with no bill; when their bill comes and is approved, apply the advance to it. A debit note reduces what you owe on an approved bill — short delivery, damaged goods — with the tax in the bill's own split; the TDS the bill deducted is not changed.
TDS challans. When a challan is recorded (TDS reports), the books now show the money leaving the bank against the section's TDS payable.