Matching a refund, sale and processing fee to a spent (negative) bank transaction on the banking page

It's a pleasure to assist you today, maggie29.

Let me help you resolve your concern about matching a refund to a negative bank transaction in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

You can create a Check to the specific amount then add a line item for the sales as a negative amount. In this way, you can match the transactions to the bank feeds. Let me show you how.

1. Click the + New button.
2. Select Check.
3. Choose the Payee from the drop-down list.
4. Enter the necessary details to match the transaction.
5. Example: make the refund and charge fees as the positive amount, then the sales as a negative amount.
6. Select Save and close or Save and new.

Once done, you can now match your transactions. Just follow the steps shared by my colleague on how to much them. 

I'm also adding this article to further guide you in managing the growth of your business using QuickBooks: Help Articles. It includes topics about account management, banking, and expenses, to name a few. You can click the + More topics button to view other selections.

If there's anything else you need help with, please reach out to me. I'd be sure to jump in as soon as I can. Thanks for posting and have a great day.

Thanks for this suggestion. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on a negative total.

What about using a journal entry?

Thank you, SheandL.

I need some clarification.

I have an original invoice and its refund, plus an additional invoice, and a fee. The first refund, second invoice and the fee are batched into one bank transaction that is negative. I make the two invoices. For the refund, is it better to use a credit memo or a refund receipt?

In the first set of steps, Step 3. skip all the way down to add funds. Add my total refund in one line, invoice in another, and then fees. In all these steps, have I just made a duplicate of everything?

These steps do not reconcile the deposit under bank transactions. Do I just exclude it?

Can I use a journal entry? I feel like this might be simpler.

I do appreciate your help, but pardon me for saying the method you provided is not intuitive. My interest here is for efficiency. I'm not the only one who is annoyed that we can't match ALL the things we need for batched deposits under bank transactions. WHY isn't it possible? Can it be? Help me out, developers.

I appreciate you for getting back on this thread, maggie29. I'm here to walk you through handling your fee, sale, and refund in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

Beforehand, please be reminded that batched processed data will cause one (total amount of the transactions plus the fee) negative amount when uploaded to your bank feeds. It's the reason why matching them is not possible.

Going back, we can handle the invoice payments by maximizing the receive payments feature to clear off the invoice balance. Also, the refund can be recorded as a credit memo, expense, refund receipt, or check. It depends on which is more applicable to your situation.

Then, the bank fees are entered as a negative line item when generating it using the Bank deposit in QBO. It will allow you to move the payment from the Undeposited Funds account to the appropriate bank account.

Meanwhile, if you've yet to initiate the refund for the customer, you may use either a Credit memo or Refund receipt to enter it in QBO. For additional information and detailed steps, please check out this link as your reference: Record a customer refund in QuickBooks Online.

On the other hand, the steps provided by my colleague are applicable if you have not recorded the invoice payment, refund, and fees in the program yet. If you've added them already, we can directly clear the transactions from your Bank register to avoid duplicate data:

1. Go to the Gear icon and select Chart of accounts.
2. Look for or enter the bank account where you've designated those transactions on the search bar. Then, click View register.
3. Locate the invoice payment, fee, and refund.
4. Tick the checkmark column (✔) until the C icon shows up to mark it as cleared.

Moreover, excluding the transactions from your bank feeds is essential to avoid identical entries. It's a significant procedure to ensure a seamless process of generating your transactions manually in the program. The excluded data are not re-uploaded in the system.

Regarding your concern about creating a Journal entry (JE), it's used as a last resort to fix or balance your books. If you prefer using JE to deal with your situation, it's advisable to consult your accountant. This way, you're guided with an accurate accounting process.

For future reference, I'm also adding this article to help you if you need to organize your reports and choose what information will be available in its data: Customize reports in QuickBooks Online.

Please add a reply to this thread if you have follow-up questions regarding your transactions, accounts, or reports. We're always here in the Community to help you in any way.

The deposit method and journal entry method create new entries. It does work to just go to the register and change the deposit to C and ignore the deposit under bank transactions. This means I have to make an expense for the fee I need to have recorded. Okay. Fine. Thanks.

The reason I have a problem with this: I cannot properly link all the transactions to the deposit with any of these methods. I don't like not having a proper story for the debit that just looks like it disappears. I think it looks suspicious to be just clearing information off the registers without things being properly linked.

AND by deleting the duplicate deposit AND excluding the deposit under bank transactions, the debit I'm trying to reconcile completely disappears from the chart of accounts.

So my problem is still not fixed.

Okay. Here's the way I found to make it work.

Credit memo for the refund.

Match that refund to the positive invoice for payment.

Make an expense for the negative amount.

Match that expense to the bank transaction.

It's inelegant. But it looks like the only way to not create duplicates and link things as clearly as possible.

The above method does leave a negative open balance under the customer, which is not ideal.

Seriously, the only way it makes sense to do the matching for batched bank deposits like this is to LET US HAVE ACCESS TO CREDIT MEMOS AND REFUND RECEIPTS WHEN MATCHING TRANSACTIONS. I don't care that it isn't possible. Make it possible. This problem is not going away and it appears there is NO PERFECT WAY to solve it the way things currently work in Quickbooks.

Thanks for your reply, @maggie29.

I recognize what you feel. To make this possible, you can send this recommendation to our Product Developers. They might be able to consider implementing this feature.

I'll show you how:

1. Click the Gear icon and choose Feedback.
2. Enter your feedback Suggestion.
3. Press Next.

Check out the Feedback forum page to see a list of other QuickBooks users who have already suggested this feature, as well as the recent updates in QuickBooks.

Moreover, this article can be handy in reconciling your accounts to keep your books balance: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online.

Please know that you can post anytime if you have questions about transactions or want to share your best practices using the product. The Community always has your back.