Startup Question Re: Accounts Receivables

Hi pondball, 

Thank you for the details explaining your situation, as that helps me gain a better understanding of what you're trying to achieve. QuickBooks Online makes it easy to record customer payments and keep track of your sales. I can help shed some light on how to handle this for you. 

You mentioned that the five receivables were invoiced in the 2020 year, and that the payments were received in 2021. You also mentioned that two of the five were recorded as opening balances when you created the customer, and the other three are not yet posted. What you have done with the first two is correct, as when you enter an opening balance while creating a new customer, the system automatically generates an invoice for the opening balance. This posts the receivable amount to your accounts receivable account. So you're correct in saying that creating new invoices for those two transactions would make a second posting and impact your inventory and GST accounts. Now, you just need to record the payment received for them and match it to the system generated invoice. Here's how to do this: 

• Click the + New button.
• Select Receive Payment.
• From the Customer dropdown, select the name of the customer.
• From the Payment method dropdown, select the payment method.
• From the Deposit to dropdown, select the account you put the payment into. 
• In the Outstanding Transactions section, select the checkbox for the invoice representing the opening balance amount.
• (Optional) Enter the Reference no. and Memo if needed. 
• When you're done, select Save and close.

You can read more about receiving payments in this article: Record invoice payments in QuickBooks Online

As for the other three transactions that you mentioned, you can enter the amounts as opening balances for new customers if the customers have not already been added yet. If they have been added already, you can create an invoice for them since there wouldn't be any system generated invoices for opening balances as was the case for the first two transactions. You can learn how to record an invoice from this Community article: Create invoices in QuickBooks Online

Please let me know if you have any other questions about this process!

HI CaitlinOG

Thanks for your reply... and yes, that worked. 

What I did however was change the date of the opening balance to the previous year (as advised by my accountant) so that I would not be charged twice for the tax I had already collected and remitted in the previous year. (btw I should have clarified the previous year I spoke of was 2019 with the current year better defined as 2020)

So, the date of opening balance for the Customers were recorded as 31/12/2019 and the payments made for these were 01/15/2020 (the same date as the actual bank deposit. All three A/R invoices came up as a match for the Bank deposit, however,

One more question on this.

We also had a $140 Cash deposit on that same day (15/01/2020). How do I record this cash deposit in QBO when I do the Match, so that the amount of the deposit in the QBO Bank Feed matches the total amount going into QBO?

Hi pondball, 

I'm glad to hear that my previous response was helpful to you! In regards to the $140 cash deposit, you can create a Bank Deposit within QuickBooks Online to record the deposit, which you can then match to the transaction within your Banking screen. Here are the steps to create a cash deposit:

• Click the + New button to the top left of your screen.
• Select Bank Deposit.
• From the Account dropdown menu, choose the bank account that the money went into. Set the date of the deposit to Jan 15 2020. 
• The next step will depend what the $140 cash related to, as you'll select who gave you the money in the Received from column and the Account will be what the cash was for, like Sales for example.
• Set the payment method to Cash, fill in the Amount and select the Sales Tax code.
• When you're finished entering the information, click Save and close.

Your cash deposit will then be recorded in QuickBooks Online. You can learn more about making deposits in QuickBooks Online here. When you go to Banking, you can now match the deposit to the transaction from the bank feed. You can check out this Community article if you need more information on matching the transactions: Categorize and match online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online

Please reach out if there's anything else I can help you with! 

Thanks again CaitlinOG

Indeed it was very helpful.

The cash that went in was simply us bringing our Petty Cash on hand down to an even $100 at the time. The Ending Balance in 2019 was $240, thus the $140 deposit.

Would I still be able to enter the $140 deposit as you outlined, but make the Received From: Petty Cash?

There would be no Sales Tax in this case I would presume as it was not directly related to any sales that weren't accounted for in 2019.

just added...

Would I not put the money into Undeposited Funds so that I can combine it with the three invoices to complete the total deposit, and the Received from would be from the Petty Cash account? Or is that possible?

Will this work? I have added it to the Add Funds to this Deposit Line below the other invoices.

image attached

Perfect!

Thanks again for your assistance, CaitlinOG!

Much appreciated.

You're very welcome @pondball. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us here in Community with any future questions. We're here to help!