How should I track cash income for my business?

It's my pleasure to guide you on how to track cash income for your business, @jae6. 

You can create an invoice when your customer agrees to pay you later. Aside from that, you can set up terms to indicate how long the customer has to pay.  

For more detailed info, you may review this article for your reference: Record invoices in QuickBooks Online.

On the other hand, a sales receipt is used when your customer pays you on the spot for goods or services. To record the transaction, here's what you need to do:

1. Go to the + New button.
2. Choose Sales receipt.
   
   
3. Select the customer from the Customer dropdown. 
4. Enter the sales info, such as the payment method.
5. Record line items for the products and services you sold.
6. Once done, click Save and close.
   
   

Can I also clarify if you only want to categorize sales receipts or not? I appreciate any extra information you can give, and it will help us provide the best solution.

Additionally, I've attached an article you can read through to guide you on how to accept a credit or debit card payment in QuickBooks Online: Process payment. 

Fill me in if you have further questions about handling cash income in your QuickBooks Online account. I'll be happy to help you again. Keep safe and have a good day.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I would like to categorize sales receipts. I was also asking if it would be best to use a sales receipt for cash income from our vending machines. We collect cash from each machine weekly. I want to report cash income for our different machines, but I'm not listing particular products that were sold. 

@jae6 ,

a sales receipt will work. Just create one item that represents all the products in the vending machine or your total sales in a week. Name it something like Weekly Sales and use it on the receipt.

Thanks. I'm a little confused on how to go about this.

We deposit cash into our bank account that is linked to quickbooks. If I create a sales receipt for one of our machines, and categorize the cash deposits on our bank statement to Sales of Product Income, I believe they will be counted twice in our income. I don't think it would be possible to link the receipts to a deposit because we only make deposits in $100 denominations (i.e. bundle of 100 dollar bills, bag of 2000 quarters) - the sales receipts have to add up to the exact amount of the deposit in order to link them.

Basically I want to track each machine's income for our records, and record these sales/deposits as Sales of Product Income.

I appreciate the clarifications that you gave, @jae6.

Let me share additional insights with managing the income of your vending machines in QuickBooks Online.

Yes, you're right. Creating a sales receipt for one of your machines, and categorizing the cash deposits on the bank statement to Sales of Product Income will create a duplicate income. 

To get this matter sorted out, you can undo the deposit that you made and create a sales receipt for each of the vending machine. This way, you can deposit the sales to the Undeposited Funds account. Then, you can create a lumpsum deposit for receipts and match them afterward.

Here's how to undo the deposit:

1. Click on the Gear icon.
2. Select Chart of Accounts.
3. Choose the account where the income is deposited and click View register.
4. Under the Ref No. and Type column, select the deposit.
5. Click Delete.
6. Select Yes.

Once done, let's go ahead and create a sales receipt for each of the vending machine and deposit the amount to the Undeposited Funds account.

To do that:

1. Select + New.
2. Click on Sales receipt
3. Select the customer from the Customer dropdown. This could be the name of your vending machine.
4. Enter the sales info, such as the payment method and select Undeposited Funds in the Deposit to section. 
5. Enter line items for the items you sold.
6. When you're done, select Save and close.

For more details about creating ales receipts, please see this link: Create and send sales receipts in QuickBooks Online.

After that, you can now create a lumpsum deposit for all the income made for your sales receipts. You can also check the sample snip on how the deposit will look like: 

From there, you can now match the deposit and the income deposited on the Undeposited Funds account from the banking page.

To guide you in utilizing the Undeposited Funds account and matching your transactions, please see these resources: 

• Using Undeposited Funds in QuickBooks Online
• Categorize and match online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online

Please let me know if you have anymore questions with your sales transactions in QuickBooks. I'm just post away if you need a helping hand. All the best!

I just have one doubt about entering sales receipt when recording cash income. I have a bookkeeping client on cash basis, however whenever I use the Sales Receipt to record the money she received (not earned), that amount shows up on the accrual basis of QBO. How do I record her cash income without it appearing on accrual?

I appreciate you joining the thread, Angel. Let me give you an overview of tracking cash basis income in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

You're right about using a sales receipt to record cash basis income in QuickBooks. However, this transaction will show in both Cash and Accrual basis reporting once the transaction date is part of the reporting period since the accrual method displays all transactions paid or not.

For now, you can modify the report's date or deselect the Sales Receipt (and other cash income entries) for the Transaction Type filter. This way, cash income won't be appearing on an Accrual basis.

1. Open your report. 
2. Go to the Customize tab.
3. Set the Report period, and then the Accounting method to Accrual.
4. Click on Transaction Type under Filter, then choose the transactions you want to add from the dropdown menu.
5. Tap on Run Report to refresh the page.

Here's an overview of the accounting methods in QBO: Choose between cash and accrual accounting methods in QuickBooks Online.

On the other hand, you can run through the resources from this material for more tips while running basic reports in our system: Run reports in QuickBooks Online.

If you have follow-up questions regarding your reports, let me know by leaving a comment below. I'm always here to help. Have a good one!