Here’s how to process payments you receive during the day.
How do you handle money that comes in to pay for products and/or services you’ve sold during your workday?
In earlier days (and perhaps even now), you probably stashed the checks in a folder or lockbox or someone’s desk drawer. At the end of the day, someone had to match payments against invoices to make sure they were processed correctly, tally up the totals and fill out a deposit slip, and run to the bank.
If you’ve taken a QuickBooks training course, you know that it’s easier using the software.
Where the Money Goes
There are two ways in QuickBooks to record funds that have been remitted to you. You can go to Customers | Enter Sales Receipts (or click Create Sales Receipts on the home page) if you’ve received money for a purchase that you’re not invoicing because it was paid immediately. If you do send an invoice, you’d click the Receive Payments icon on the home page (Customers | Receive Payments).
But where do those payments go in QuickBooks? Funds received from both invoices and sales receipts go into the Undeposited Funds account.
Payments received but not yet deposited are sent to the Undeposited Funds account.
Three Origins
How does this daily income get into QuickBooks’ Undeposited Funds account? You use the Record Deposits tool. You could go there after you receive each payment individually, but it’s much easier to save all of them and enter one deposit at the end of the day.
To use this feature, click the Record Deposits icon on the home page or go to Banking | Make Deposits. Your screen will contain that day’s payments, like this:
QuickBooks’ Payments to Deposit window displays all money received that hasn’t yet been physically deposited in your bank.
If you plan to deposit all of them that day, click the Select All button. Otherwise, place a check mark in front of the ones you plan to put in the bank. Click OK.
Note: Your merchant service processor actually deposits any payments made by credit card or e-check, but you must still record the deposit. It’s a good idea to record deposits according to type, since they’re handled differently. You may also want to attend a QuickBooks training course to better understand merchant accounts.
You can use this window to record three types of incoming funds:
- Payments credited to invoices
- Payments that required sales receipts, and
- Any other funds that you need to deposit, even if they don’t fall into those two categories.
Moving the Money
After you click OK, the Make Deposits window will open. Click the Payments icon in the toolbar and a new window opens. Make sure there’s a check mark in front of each transaction that you want to include. Click OK. Fill in the fields at the bottom of the window if you want cash back, and save your work.
You’ll still have to fill out an actual deposit slip for the bank (or order printable deposit slips from Intuit that your bank will accept), but these procedures will fulfill QuickBooks’ requirements and make account reconciliation easier.
