How to Send a Remittance Advice in QuickBooks Online (and Read One You Receive)

A remittance advice is a short note that says "here is the payment, and here is exactly what it covers". The good news for QuickBooks Online users is that you can send one. The catch is that the option is not where most people look for it, and which route you use depends on whether you pay through QuickBooks Bill Pay. This guide covers both routes for the paying side first, then deals honestly with the harder half: what to do when a customer pays you and sends a remittance to your accounts receivable inbox.

If you came here to send proof of a vendor payment, the next sections answer that directly. Producing the remittance is a short job once you know where it lives. Receiving one at volume is the job that eats your week, and we get to that near the end.

Does QuickBooks Online send a remittance advice?

Yes, in two ways, depending on how you pay.

• Through QuickBooks Bill Pay. If you pay a vendor with QuickBooks Bill Pay, a remittance advice PDF is attached to the payment email the vendor receives automatically. You do not have to turn it on.
• By hand on QuickBooks Online without Bill Pay. You can still send a remittance from the bill payment itself, using the Send remittance action. One rule is worth knowing up front: you can only send remittance for a bill payment transaction, and it goes to the email on file from when that payment was created.

Either way, the remittance lists the vendor, the payment date, the amount, and the bills the payment settles, which is all most suppliers want: a way to tie your payment back to the right invoices without guessing.

First, record the bill payment

Sending a remittance starts from a recorded bill payment, so that has to exist first. There are two ways to create one.

Pay a single bill

1. Open the bill. Go to Expenses or Vendors, under Expenses and bills, and open the bill you are paying.
2. Select Make payment. Use the Make payment button on the bill. Choose the bank or credit account, set the payment date, and confirm the amount.
3. Apply it and save. In Outstanding Transactions, make sure the bill is selected, then choose Save and close.

Pay several bills at once

1. Open Pay bills. Select + New, then Pay bills.
2. Choose the account and date. Pick the payment account and the payment date.
3. Select the bills and save. Check every bill you are paying, confirm the amounts, and select Save. QuickBooks Online records a separate bill payment for each vendor in the run.

Recording a bill payment marks the bill as paid in your books. Note that unless you are paying through QuickBooks Bill Pay, this records the payment, it does not move the money: the cash still leaves your bank by check, ACH, or transfer the usual way.

Send the remittance advice on QuickBooks Online without Bill Pay

Once the bill payment exists, send the advice from the vendor.

1. Open the vendor. Go to Vendors, under Expenses and bills, and select the vendor you paid.
2. Select the bill payment. In their transaction list, check the box next to the bill payment you want to send.
3. Select Send remittance. QuickBooks Online emails the advice to the address held on the vendor when the payment was created.

That last detail trips people up. If the vendor's email has changed, updating the contact record does not redirect a remittance for a payment that already exists. To send to a different address you have to delete and recreate the bill payment with the right email, so it is worth checking the contact before you pay rather than after.

If you pay through QuickBooks Bill Pay

When the payment goes out through QuickBooks Bill Pay, the remittance is automatic. A PDF is attached to the payment notification the vendor receives, on by default, for every Bill Pay payment, so you never open the Send remittance action at all. If a vendor says they did not get one, the usual causes are a missing or wrong email on the vendor record, so check the vendor's contact details first.

Printing a remittance or payment stub

Sometimes you need a copy on paper or as a PDF rather than an email, for the file or for a vendor who only accepts their own format. QuickBooks Online has a report for exactly this.

1. Open the report. Go to Reports and search for "bill", then open Bills and Applied Payments (Bill Stub, Vendor Check Stub).
2. Set the period. Change the report period to the payment date.
3. Filter to one vendor. Use Customize, then Filter, to narrow to a single vendor, then run it and print or save it as a PDF.

If you print checks, the check voucher does the same job: it lists the bills the check pays on the stub. One limit to know is length. A printed voucher stub shows around thirteen bills and then summarizes the rest, so a payment covering dozens of invoices will not fit line by line on a single stub. The Bills and Applied Payments report, or Transaction List by Vendor, is the cleaner option when one payment covers a long list.

What about a remittance advice template in QuickBooks Online?

People search for a "QuickBooks Online remittance template" expecting an editable document like the invoice form. It is more constrained than that.

Custom form styles, under the gear icon, only covers sales forms: invoices, estimates, and sales receipts. Bill payments, remittances, and the voucher stub are not in that list, so you cannot redesign their layout. They print with your company name and the fixed fields QuickBooks holds: payment date, amount, and the bills covered with their references. For most suppliers that is exactly right, because the document's job is to be unambiguous rather than branded. If you genuinely need a branded, per-vendor remittance, that is a job for a third-party app from the QuickBooks App Store rather than a built-in setting.

The other side of the desk: when a customer sends you a remittance

Everything above is the easy half. Now flip the desk around. You are no longer paying a vendor; you are the supplier, and a customer has just paid you and sent a remittance to prove it. Sending was a short job for them. Receiving it is a different job, and in QuickBooks Online it does not live in the vendor screens at all. It lives in cash application: matching every incoming customer payment to the right open invoices and posting it.

You handle this with Receive Payment. Select + New, then Receive payment, choose the customer, enter the total in Amount received, and check every open invoice the payment covers in the Outstanding Transactions list. QuickBooks applies the money across the selected invoices, and you can adjust the Payment column on any line for a short payment or a deduction. That is straightforward for a payment against one or two invoices. The trouble is volume and length.

Consider a wholesale distributor that supplies a national grocery chain. The grocer pays once a fortnight and sends a multi-page remittance covering close to two hundred invoices, some short-paid by a few dollars for damaged stock, one offset by a promotional rebate. That single deposit has to be split across all of them, line by line, inside Receive Payment, and every deduction accounted for. What was a short task on the sending side is now most of an afternoon on the receiving side, repeated every fortnight.

It also has a quieter cost. A customer payment recorded but not applied to specific invoices sits in unapplied cash, and QuickBooks Online reports it as Unapplied Cash Payment Income on a cash-basis profit and loss. Until someone goes back and applies it, your accounts receivable aging is wrong, your income looks overstated, and collections may chase invoices that are already paid. Clearing unapplied cash is the same matching work, just deferred.

This is the half that automation actually helps with. Extraction reads every invoice line off the incoming remittance, matches each one against your open invoices in QuickBooks Online, handles the short-payments and offsets, and lets you review the allocations before they post, so a multi-page remittance becomes a quick check rather than an afternoon. That is the job RemitClear's cash application for QuickBooks Online is built for. To be clear, that is the receiving side. Sending proof to your own vendors stays exactly where it is, in the bill payment and Send remittance screens, and the steps at the top of this post are all you need for it. For the platform-agnostic view, see our overview of cash application automation software.

Summary

QuickBooks Online can send a remittance advice, it is just not a single obvious button. If you pay through QuickBooks Bill Pay, the remittance is attached to the vendor's payment email automatically. If you are on QuickBooks Online without Bill Pay, record the bill payment, then open the vendor, check the bill payment, and use Send remittance, remembering that it goes to the email on file. For a paper or PDF copy, run the Bills and Applied Payments report or print the check voucher. The layout is fixed, and for most suppliers that is fine.

The hard half is the one nobody searches for until it is hurting them: what to do when a remittance lands in your own inbox. In QuickBooks Online that is cash application, done through Receive Payment, and at volume it scales badly, especially once a single remittance runs to dozens or hundreds of invoices with deductions sprinkled through it and unapplied cash piling up behind them. Sending proof of a payment is a short job. Receiving one at volume is the job worth automating.