GnuCash has an integrated accounts payable system. The transactions generated by the A/P system will be placed within the Accounts Payable account, as a record of what occurs, but you do not directly work within this account. Rather, you will principally be working with the 4 integrated GnuCash A/P application components, available from the sub-menu Business -> Vendors. These 4 application components are:
Vendors are people or companies from which you buy products or services on credit.
Bills represent the physical bill you receive from a vendor, requesting payment. A bill contains an itemized list of things you purchased.
Jobs (optional) is where you register Vendor Jobs, a grouping mechanism by which you can group bills to a particular vendor.
Process Payments is where you register money payments to a vendor to whom you owe money.
In the next 4 sections of this chapter, the above 4 application components will be introduced.