Edit a reconciled bill payment

PalmettoProCon · ‎April 28, 2018

When we started an account with one of our vendors our account exploded! I couldn't keep up with entering the invoices as fast as they were coming in (on top of everything else) and at a certain point the vendor was requiring a payment. So I wrote a check (don't remember if it was through bill pay or not) anyways, the check wasn't assigned to the invoices that the vendor ended up applying it to. I also didn't get any type of receipt or detail as to where they applied the payment, my husband dropped the payment off. So now that our account is huge and I am acclemated to the point that I can handle all of my job responsibilities I am reviewing all of my accounts and finding that I have got to figure out1st where the vendor applied the payments (yes there were 2 checks written in one week that I have no idea where they were applied) and second how do I go back to the check and edit the bills attached to it since it was already reconciled? I don't want to change anything about the amount of the check just the bills associated with each payment. I have gone in already and deleted all of the incorrectly applied bills and reentered them but now I cannot figure out how to reapply them correctly to the reconciled check payment.

MichaelDL · ‎April 30, 2018

Thanks for reaching out, PalmettoProCon.

It's time to get you acclimated to applying those bill payments in QuickBooks. First, you'll need to get in contact with your vendor to determine which bills they applied your payments to. Once you have that information, you can re-assign those checks to match what the vendor marked as paid or left outstanding. The steps for doing this will depend on what type of check transaction you created in QBO.

If you created a regular check by going to the Plus icon > Check: the funds assigned to this transaction can't be applied to a bill, they're only entered as an expense or liability payment by adding a Product/Service or ledger account line item. You can find the check you created by heading to the Expenses tab > Vendor tab > click the vendor that you made the payment to. Since this check can't mark those bills as paid, you'll want to delete and recreate it from the Plus icon > Pay Bills screen. If you created the payment this way initially, then all you'll need to do is open it and un-check the bills that are currently feeding the amount (if any) and instead check the ones that the vendor applied. You can make a partial payment on these bills if needed by editing the amount in the Payment field for any particular bill.

If you created the transaction as a regular Check and had to delete it, there's one more step to keep your reconciliation in balance. From the Accounting tab > click to View Register on the bank account that paid the check. Find the new payment in the register, and click the Cleared status box until it shows an R. While the original check will remain as deleted on the reconciliation report, this manually reconciled transaction will keep the account in balance. Just make sure the check that was deleted is the exact same amount as the one you recreated.

I hope this information helps to get you back on track with your account. If you have any other questions, you can reply below and I'll be here to help with anything you need.

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MichaelDL · ‎April 30, 2018

Thanks for reaching out, PalmettoProCon.

It's time to get you acclimated to applying those bill payments in QuickBooks. First, you'll need to get in contact with your vendor to determine which bills they applied your payments to. Once you have that information, you can re-assign those checks to match what the vendor marked as paid or left outstanding. The steps for doing this will depend on what type of check transaction you created in QBO.

If you created a regular check by going to the Plus icon > Check: the funds assigned to this transaction can't be applied to a bill, they're only entered as an expense or liability payment by adding a Product/Service or ledger account line item. You can find the check you created by heading to the Expenses tab > Vendor tab > click the vendor that you made the payment to. Since this check can't mark those bills as paid, you'll want to delete and recreate it from the Plus icon > Pay Bills screen. If you created the payment this way initially, then all you'll need to do is open it and un-check the bills that are currently feeding the amount (if any) and instead check the ones that the vendor applied. You can make a partial payment on these bills if needed by editing the amount in the Payment field for any particular bill.

If you created the transaction as a regular Check and had to delete it, there's one more step to keep your reconciliation in balance. From the Accounting tab > click to View Register on the bank account that paid the check. Find the new payment in the register, and click the Cleared status box until it shows an R. While the original check will remain as deleted on the reconciliation report, this manually reconciled transaction will keep the account in balance. Just make sure the check that was deleted is the exact same amount as the one you recreated.

I hope this information helps to get you back on track with your account. If you have any other questions, you can reply below and I'll be here to help with anything you need.

mdh · ‎November 19, 2018

i have a question that may be related. not sure.

we paid vendor bills by entering bill, going to pay vendor bills and selecting bills. Printed checks with check stubs and mailed to customer. Now it's where it gets weird...when checking vendor statements against what our QB data shows, we saw discrepancies thinking they didn't apply our payments where we showed on stub. The vendors argued that they did and even sent us copies of the checks stubs (this is more than one vendor) when we searched QB sure enough it appears that the data in QB was somehow changed and doesn't match what our own check stub showed. It will have a check mark to the left of the bill we showed paid on stub but instead of the amount paid on stub, the amount is now zero. This is completely throwing off many of our accounts. How did this happen and now that the checks have cleared the bank how do we fix it?

AlcaeusF · ‎November 19, 2018

I'm glad to see you reaching out to us, mdh.

I want to help figure out why the amount of the bills are now zero in QuickBooks Desktop.

All bills will show an amount once paid in the system. It will only change the amount to zero if you void a transaction.

We can run the Audit Trail report to check if there are changes made to your bill transactions. Once a transaction is modified, changes will display directly under the transaction heading.

Here's how you can run the report:

Click the Reports tab at the top menu bar.
Select Accountant & Taxes.
Select Audit Trail.
Filter the date to All.

Let me know if you need more assistance with the bill transactions. I'll be sure to get back to you.

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Edit a reconciled bill payment