@JBruc
Let's break this out into parts:
"Where I messed up is recording the deposits the way the tech showed me, I thought. I created an invoice for each deposit"
Invoice = Unpaid sale for the date of the invoice, to track that you anticipate Payment to come later and/or in partial amounts. That provides two steps, to separate the Dates of the sale and the Dates of the Payments, and for tracking Unpaid and Late payers. This especially applies to an Accrual Basis entity and someone selling Inventory, since that date of the sale, it is Gone from being on hand and in stock.
Sale Receipt = One Step. This sale date also is a Paid Sale.
"and received the money. This created undeposited funds."
You get to set the file to Flow each payment directly to Banking, or Group with UF, to be able to show it is part of a Batched Deposit for a date. I send 50 individual Checks as Receive Payment to UF. I use Banking menu > Make Deposit and select 16-18 at a time, to make up the Fat Envelope I take to the teller for deposit. My Bank statement will show 3 Big Deposit entries, and now, so will QB. I don't want to see 50 individual deposit entries in the QB Bank, while trying to match that to three Deposit Batched amounts that come from the Bank statement.
"I was told to delete these invoices which would clear the undeposited funds."
No. It Removes Sales. It leaves the Payments with no reason for you to have been paid.
"In addition, the tech said I could receive the deposited income without using undeposited funds."
Yes, but you need to use one of the Sales Functions:
Invoice and Receive Payment
or
Sales Receipt
What you then do is Control how the Money Flows to Banking.
What you need to do for UF is Make That deposit and select what actually went into the bank each Date. That Clears UF. You simply haven't finished your work.
Don't Remove Sales; that is going backwards in the steps. Move Forward, and show what finally did end up at Bank and for which date.
"A couple other issues I found. 1) I credited the deposit to the wrong job"
You don't enter Names in the Deposit screen. You use Sales receipt or invoice. The Payment or Sales Receipt is going to pass Name to the Deposit function. If you Made invoices, Received Payments, Deleted the invoices, and then use the Deposit screen manually to enter income, you are doing three things, the invoice already was income, and now you have made negative AR and orphaned the UF entries.
Never work in the Deposit screen manually. Use the functions.
"2) customer has a negative balance for an amount equal to 2 deposits."
Right; too many tasks. You likely have better things to do, than run the data in circles. Never talk to that "tech" again.
Do this:
Change your Preferences, if you don't ever group more than one entry into Banking. Now they will hit individually. Or, leave the preference for UF, and then you can select them individually for deposit, when that applies, and Batched, when that applies. Do what matches your Reality.
If the date of the payment is also what you used for the Receive Payment, then just make sales receipt now. Delete those Received Payments.
Otherwise, for those payments that exist, recreate the Invoices. Open each Payment and relink it to the invoice(s) shown at the bottom. Do this individually and by date, if the customer had different sales over different dates and you need to match Payment to the right invoice.
Let's make sure we don't Affect this, if possible: "I did get all of 2018 bankstatements reconciled."
Make sure for all of this, to select UF for anything you are changing now. You don't want them to hit Banking directly, while we Fix this.
Once you fixed all Sales...
We open one Deposit screen where you put manual entry as Income. Use the Payments Icon at the top and select the Payment or Sales Receipt that is supposed to be flowing here. Then, click on the line(s) you manually entered and Delete them. Use Edit menu > Delete, or Ctl + Delete Key, one by one.
Now you should see the Deposit Total has not changed; the Contents of this worksheet are the Properly Selected data flowing here. This will not Unreconcile, as long as it is the same amount. Save and Close.
Keep doing this until UF is Cleared and all manual Entries of Deposit as Income are replaced with the right data.
If the bank has transactions that unreconcile, and you know the amount and fix is the right thing to do, such as, one entry becomes three or three entries become one, do not Worry. We do a Min-Rec or Interim Reconcile.
Use the Final Statement you already used, recently. Use that Ending balance and Ignore the Beginning balance on the screen and that statement. That Value is the Net of all previously Cleared transactions, which you know you just affected, so Ignore it.
Your Target is always that ending balance. Your goal is to Reclear anything historic that you was previously processed and cleared. You get to that same difference of 0. You are back on track.
