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A paid bill or invoice shows on report or window of open transactions

by Intuit• Updated 4 months ago

Open transactions report is a generic term for a report or window designed to show only open (Example: unpaid transactions). These transactions record debits or credits to Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable. They include:

  • Open Invoices Report
  • A/R Aging Summary
  • A/R Aging Detail
  • Unpaid Bills Report
  • A/P Aging Summary
  • A/P Aging Detail
  • A Transaction Summary or Detail report filtered for Paid Status = Open
  • Reminders List
  • Customer Snapshot
  • The Income Tracker

When accrual transactions such as bills or invoices are paid, they should NOT show on these reports/windows. If they do, it is likely because QuickBooks does not recognize that the transactions are already paid because:

  • a bill credit or bill payment is entered but not applied to a bill.
  • a credit memo or payment is entered but not applied to an invoice.

The following may also cause paid transactions to appear on open transactions report:

  • Aging report preferences are incorrect.
  • Terms set for a bill or invoice are incorrect or terms are set up incorrectly in the Terms List.
  • The date on your server or on your workstation are set incorrectly.
  • The Bill Payment is dated after the date range of the report.
  • Either one or both of the transactions or the link between them is damaged.

How to fix it

To resolve the issue, check one of the following:

  1. Go to the QuickBooks Reports menu and select Vendors & Payables then Unpaid Bills.
  2. Look for negative amounts that indicate unlinked bill credits or bill payments.
  3. From the Vendors/Vendors menu, choose Pay Bills to apply bill Credits and bill payments to bills.
  4. Be aware that matching transactions, (Ex: a bill and a bill payment), must have the same A/P account.
  1. Go to the QuickBooks Reports menu and select Customers & Receivables then Open Invoices.
  2. Look for negative amounts that are unapplied Payments or Credit Memos.
  3. Go to the Customers menu and select Receive Payments then apply the payments and credit memos to the appropriate invoices.
  4. Be aware that matching transactions, (Ex: an invoice and a payment) must have the same A/R account and the same Job under the Customer.
  1. Go to the QuickBooks Edit menu and select Preferences.
  2. Select Reports & Graphs on the left then go to the Company Preferences tab.
  3. Check your aging reports preference:
    • If Age from due date is selected, a transaction is "current" until the Due Date and then the aging begins.
    • If Age from transaction date is selected, the aging begins immediately on the transaction date.
  1. Go to the QuickBooks Lists menu and select Customer & Vendor Profile Lists then Terms List.
  2. Double-click the terms on the bill or invoice and ensure the terms are set correctly.
  1. On the task bar, double-click the Date/Time icon.
  2. Check that the correct date and year is showing.
  3. Make any changes if necessary.
  4. Select Apply then OK.
  5. Ask your system administrator to check the date on the server.
  6. Also check that your server and workstation have the same date and time.
  1. Quick-Zoom the amount in question to open a detail report.
  2. Quick-Zoom the bill in question to bring it to the screen.
  3. At the top of the Bill window, click the History button to show all of the linked transactions.
  4. If the linked payment is dated in the future you have 2 options:
    • If the payment is incorrectly dated into the future, change the date back to the current period.
    • Change the date range of the report to include the bill payment.

If the issue remains unresolved after checking everything, one or both of the transactions, or the link between them, may be damaged. Try to resolve data damage issues (basic troubleshooting).

Note that data damage of this type is often not fixed by either basic data damage utilities or the Automated Tools. Be sure to attempt the Manual Tools.

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