Bank reconciliations - cleared date

I'm unclear as to why you'd ever want to enter the "Cleared Date" of a check?  You're Checking Acct Register should show the date the Check, ACH, Wire Transfer, etc. was first processed and entered into the Register. 

If for some reason you really need to keep track of the date the check cleared the bank, besides the actual Bank Statement, you could enter the date into the Memo Field.  And yes, you could also just change the date of the check, but I'd recommend against changing standard practices. 

If the question is more about Reconciling your Checking Acct, don't worry about the date the check actually cleared.  If it wasn't auto check as cleared when you did a Bank Sync, just go ahead and manually check it off during the Reconciliation process.  You may have checks written in April that do not clear until May, that's okay.  Especially if you write a lot of checks at the end of the month.

I would want to track the date for record keeping / audit trail purposes.   The field "cleared date" exists in QB, but is just "grayed out"; and it feels odd that the only way it would be able to be populated is if one chooses to use bank feeds.  What if you do not use that feature?  Does QB then not allow you to enter the information manually?  Again, if a field for this information exists, it feels odd/clunky to use the memo field for tracking purposes.

When reconciling a bank account, I prefer not only to "mark" a transaction as cleared, but to have information as to what date the check cleared (so that if something is done in error, there is a quick cross reference that can be utilized to review against the bank statement).  Since the bank feeds appear to be able to populate this field (Cleared Date), then that would suggest Intuit also agrees that you would want to have the ability to have it tracked if you so desire.

This leads me back to my original question....is there a way to populate this manually, or can it only be populated via use of bank feeds?  

Thanks!

I got you covered, @ddecusatis1.

I can share some clarifications about the Cleared Date column in the reconciliation screen.

In QuickBooks Online (QBO), the option to manually add the date in the Cleared Date field of checks or deposits is unavailable. The information will populate if your bank account is connected to online banking (bank feeds). If you're not using the bank feeds feature or your account is not linked to online banking, you'll not see the cleared date column in the reconciliation window.

You may want to consider utilizing the Memo field when entering the cleared date details of the transactions as a workaround.

Just in case you need guides in performing the reconciliation process in QBO, feel free to visit this article: Learn the reconcile workflow in QuickBooks. This also includes instructions on how you can correct the beginning balances and edit a completed reconciliation.

Additionally, QBO also makes it easy for you to review your previous reconciliations. To do so, you can run a reconciliation report. You can use this as a reference to prevent mistakes when doing future ones.

I'm always around here in the Community if you have any other reconciliation concerns. Simply leave a reply and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Have a great day ahead.