Where is the reference to unused credit stored in Quickbooks?

Hi rg7,

I'm thrilled to have you join us in the QuickBooks Desktop community! I appreciate the details you've given and it's great you were able to figure out a way to move the funds as you needed using a journal entry. Now I'll help you find the unused credit memo. Here's the easiest way to do it.

1. Click Customers from the Home window to access the Customer Centre.
2. Click the customer in question.
3. In their Transactions screen look for the credit (Note: Using the Show drop-down, you can choose to just see Credit Memos).
4. Double-click the credit to open it.
5. Delete or Void it as necessary.

Other ways to find the transactions you need include using the Find tool in the Edit menu (or the shortcut CTRL + F) or by going to the Transactions tab in the Customer Centre and choosing Credit Memos. Again, you can use the filters to narrow your search. QuickBooks Desktop likes to provide the tools you need to find what you're looking for.

Give that a shot and let me know if you have more questions. :)

Wow, thanks for the quick reply LauraAB! I've looked into your suggestion about voiding the credit memo but the payment made to Company A was left as a credit to be used later and does not have a corresponding credit memo. That's the part I don't get. I looked for a way to apply the credit to an actual credit memo to then void it but I can't find a way to do that now. Any ideas?

You're welcome! I know I've taken a bit longer to respond this time, but I was looking into what options are available to you. This is kind of a complex situation where some accounting maneuvers have already been done, so it's a matter of figuring out which accounting maneuvers would need to take place to make everything balance and get rid of this unwanted credit.

I see what you mean about that kind of credit not showing up as a credit memo. Since you chose the option to have it be used later, it's creating a sort of background transaction. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but with the other things done, this credit still needs to be dealt with.

There may be a few ways to deal with this. For instance, one would be to undo what you've done and simply apply the payments individually to the customer profiles for each company. So rather than take one large sum from Customer A and do some background work to get those funds to where they need to be for B, C, and D, you would simply apply payments to the invoices in the appropriate accounts. That's perhaps the easiest way to do it.

Other ways include changing the option on the large payment from "use later" to "Refund the amount to the customer." This would create a cheque in the system for that amount. It would take, again, some workarounds to zero out that cheque amount as voiding or deleting the cheque would simply return the credit to the payment.

Whatever option you choose, you'll have to consider the reconciliation process and how this will all reflect on your books. Having an extra set of eyes would probably be helpful in this case. I also encourage members of our community to chime in on this and share their insight.

I'm curious about your idea "changing the option on the large payment from "use later" to "Refund the amount to the customer."  Where would I see that option?  I'm looking at the original payment window but don't see anything like that.

Not worries, here's a screenshot of where the option should be.

When you click the Refund option and then Save, the program will automatically create the cheque for a refund without any extra steps. Let me know if you're not seeing that option. If you could share a screenshot as well, that'd be great.

Here is the original payment window but no overpayment details show up. 

However if I bring up a payment window for Company A now I get this box in the lower right corner. 

I see. So it looks like you simply entered the payment onto the customer account without applying it to any invoices, which is a bit different than I thought. That being said, when I just tried it in my test file, I'm still able to see the options I outlined after entering a payment without an invoice. One possibility could be that you're using a different version of the program than I am. Which version and year do you have?

This is what I would do:

First, the Credit for Company A would have to be restored to it's original entry. The JE's and Payments applied to the other companies would have to be undone. 

Then, I would make the smaller companies (B,C,D) subsidiaries (or Jobs) of Company A - even if only temporarily. Then I would be able to apply the Credits of Company A across all jobs.

That's awesome! I'm glad to hear you were able to work it out through our discussion. Sometimes we just need to bounce things off others to find what we need. :)