Unapplied Cash Payment Income

Hello there, @DG5.

Thank you for posting here in the Community. I can share some insights about the Unapplied Cash Payment Income account.

Yes, you're right that the account is used when payments were received before the invoice was created. Aside from that reason, another is that you haven't match the payment to the sales transaction.

Let's work together to resolve this!

Step 1: Let's run the Open invoices report. In the Transaction Type column, locate a transaction listed as a Payment.

If the Payment transaction matches on the open invoice, you can proceed to Step 2. Otherwise, go directly to Step 3.

Step 2: The Payment transaction matches an open invoice:

1. Click the Payment date.
2. Under Outstanding Transactions, check the open invoice.
3. Select Save and close.

Step 3: The Payment transaction doesn't match an open invoice:

1. Click the Plus (+) icon.
2. Select Invoice.
3. Enter the same customer, amount and date as the payment.
4. Select Save and close.
5. Go back to the Open Invoices report.
6. Find the unapplied payment and click the date.
7. Under Outstanding Transactions, check the open invoice.
8. Select Save and close.

Repeat the same steps until there are no payment transactions anymore. After that, pull up the Profit and Loss report once more.

You should no longer see the Unapplied cash payment income, DG5.

Let me know the results, @DG5. I'm still here to help you more if you have follow-up questions about reports. Just click the "Reply" button or mention my name. Wishing you all the best!

Thanks for responding. None of these payments came up on the Open Invoice report. (A few of them are coming up on the Open Invoice report, but the majority are not.) I believe they have all been applied to invoices, but they are still coming up as Unapplied Cash Payment Income.

Thank for getting back and providing the result, @DG5.

I've checked my resources to verify if there's an on-going investigation about applied invoices still coming up as Unapplied Cash Payment Income. However, there are none. 

To better isolate this issue, I recommend calling our phone support team. They can utilize our screen sharing tool to help identify what's causing this odd behavior in QBO.

1. Log into your QuickBooks Online company.
2. Click Help.
3. Click the Contact us button.

Keep me posted how the call goes, DG5. I'd like to make sure this is taken care of. I'm still waiting for your response. Thank you and take care!

I contacted customer support and chatted with someone while they were looking at my computer screen. Unfortunately, he could not figure out why this was happening and recommended that I provide feedback to QB so they can try to figure out the bug and fix it for future editions.

You said deleting and recreating the payment worked - did you need to change the payment date to today's date (or any date after the invoice date), or did it work if you recreated the payment and kept the original payment date? I need to keep the actual payment dates accurate and can't change that. 

Thanks for your efforts!

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@DG5 wrote:

When I run my P and L cash basis, I have a lot of income in Unapplied Cash Payment Income. My  understanding is that this is the account QB uses when payments were received before the invoice was created. My question is that I have cases where the payment was received before the invoice was made, but I subsequently made the invoice and applied the payment to that invoice. Why is this income still being reported as Unapplied Cash Payment Income?

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It also depends on the date range of the P&L. Is the invoice dated after the "To" date of the P&L?

No, the invoices in question are dated within the date range of the P and L.

It's good to see you here with us again, DG5,

Let me help share additional information about Unapplied Cash Payment.

Upon running a Profit and Loss report using the Cash method, you may see Unapplied cash payment income.

Unapplied Cash Payment income is an account being used to report cash basis income from your customer's payments that are received but not applied to any sales forms.

Normally, the date of the payment is before the invoice date it's applied to.

For more detailed information, I'm attaching a great resource that you can check on: What's Unapplied Cash Payment.

If there's anything else you need help with, please feel free to reach back out. Have a great day!

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@MirriamM wrote:

It's good to see you here with us again, DG5,

 

Let me help share additional information about Unapplied Cash Payment.

 

Upon running a Profit and Loss report using the Cash method, you may see Unapplied cash payment income.

 

Unapplied Cash Payment income is an account being used to report cash basis income from your customer's payments that are received but not applied to any sales forms.

 

Normally, the date of the payment is before the invoice date it's applied to.

 

For more detailed information, I'm attaching a great resource that you can check on: What's Unapplied Cash Payment.

 

If there's anything else you need help with, please feel free to reach back out. Have a great day!

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What is the point of this post?  It's just repeating what's been stated above

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@DG5 wrote:

No, the invoices in question are dated within the date range of the P and L.

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Not possible then that there is Unapplied Cash Payment Income.  There's something else wrong

Did you click on the amount in the P&L? 

I did click on it. It is showing me all the payments and invoices that caused this problem. I have nearly 400 total transactions in there, about 140 payments and about 260 invoices. It also ends up with a balance of negative 30K.

Hello there, DG5.

I appreciate you for trying out all the workarounds provided above.

Since I want to make sure this properly taken care of, I may need to have additional information about your concern with Unapplied Cash Payment Income. 

I would appreciate if you can add some screenshots to help me better understand the issue. I'm looking forward for your response.

I can't post the screenshots publicly due to privacy concerns. I can send them to you privately if you provide me with an email address to send them to.

Thanks for getting back to us, DG5.

At Intuit, we value our relationship with you as a QuickBooks user. Your account's security is one of our top priorities here in the QuickBooks Community. In this case, I encourage you to contact our QuickBooks Online Support Team. They have additional tools to pull up your account in a secure environment and do a remote session.

You can contact our live support by following the steps provided by my colleague LilyC on her post above.

Please know that you're always welcome to post if you have any other questions. Have a good one. 

It's not an issue of the Invoice being Made.

It's an issue of the Date On That Invoice. This is the sale date. The payment has to be This same date or Later. If the Payment is Before the sale, and you are a cash basis entity, you got Income. It is Uncategorized, because you used Receive Payment when no open charge exists. Until the date of the invoice, then, it is Unapplied and Uncategorized. The Invoice can be marked Paid, but the Date of the payment being earlier than the Sale is the problem.

This is why you would use a Prepayment Item; you list that on a Sales Receipt when someone Prepays you. You later make the Real Invoice and for that date of that invoice, you date a Customer Refund/Credit Memo with the same Prepayment Item, so that you can Apply the prepayment to the Actual sale.

And for a cash basis entity, the prepayment item is linked to an income account to handle the activities of the coming and going of prepayment, like this. For an Accrual Basis entity or a cash basis entity allowed to hold liability, your prepayment other charge or service item is linked to a Liability account.

Dates Matter in accounting.

There is another reason why you have Unapplied Cash Payments.  If you have linked to your bank account  to QB Online but have not completed the "make deposits" in Online, then when the bank downloads a deposit it cannot find a deposit already in QBO to match to.  For instance, the bank downloads a deposit for $200.  It wants to match that to a customer deposit you have already recorded in QBO, but since it cannot find a deposit for $200 in your QBO because you have not done the "make Deposit" function, then it cannot match the two together.  So it puts the downloaded deposit into "Unapplied Cash Payments" because it does not what customer to match it to.  I believe I just have to complete the "make deposits" function and it will match the deposits, but I need more detail from my client before I can try it on their QBO. 

Am I wrong? I think you have Intuit support answering this now and they didn't mention this...So am I wrong?

You're definitely correct, julieh1.

What you've shared is one of the possibilities why an Unapplied Cash Payments will show up in QuickBooks reports. We also have these articles as additional guide and reference: 

• What's Unapplied Cash Payment?
• Unapplied cash payment income on your profit and loss
• What to do if you see unapplied cash bill payment expense on your profit and loss

Don't hesitate to always come back to the Community if you ever need help with QuickBooks. We're always to answer your questions. 

Just change the date of your invoice to the date of the payment. If the payment date is prior to the invoice date you get unapplied cash payment income.

That will effect reconciliations, so that is not an options. Again dates matter.

We also get prepayments.  What I need to know is how to match them up moving forward so they don't end up in unapplied cash income account.  If anyone knows.  Thank you. SM

Thanks for joining on this thread, @SMHVAC.

I can see that the dates matter for your business. To ensure that it will not throw off your reconciliation, I suggest consulting with an accountant. They can provide recommendations on how to properly track transactions, so they will not end up in the unapplied cash income account.

In regard to the prepayments, I suggest following the resolution provided by @qbteachmt. For an overview of the unapplied cash payment account, check out the What's Unapplied Cash Payment article. 

If there’s anything else I can help you with, post a comment below. I’ll be right here to assist further. Have a good one. 

After going through the "open invoices" report and applying all of the payments to the invoices I was still left with a ton of payments that were applied to the invoices but still showing up as "unapplied cash payments".  I went back to the report again and noticed that the issue WAS the fact that the initial payment was dated before the invoice, which was causing them to not sync up in my P&L report! Thanks a ton for this info.. I was going crazy trying to figure out what the issue was!!

@qbteachmt Thank you for your input. I completely agree, dates matter in accounting. I just want to clarify, when you said "prepayment items" did you mean classify them into a prepayment account upon receiving the prepayment instead of applying it to the actual invoice?

I've been dealing this through a journal entry. I create a journal entry to zero out the A/R balance and reverse the same entry. These entries are matched so that the actual payment is still applied to the actual invoice without have a negative A/R. Does this makes sense? 

I hope you can let me know what you think. Thank you.

Thanks for following this thread, @jsedigo2. I'm here to answer your concerns.

You can create a service item, then change the income account to the "PrePayment Account" that you have created. Here's how: 

1. Go to the Sales menu, then select the Products and services.
2. Click the New button, then choose Service.
3. Enter the name of your item, then select a category from the Category drop-down menu. 
4. Fill out the necessary fields.
5. Select on Save and close.

To change the income account to the Prepayment Account, here's how: 

1. Go to the Settings menu, then select Products and Services.
2. In the Action column of the appropriate item, click Edit.
3. From the Income account drop-down, choose the Prepayment Account you've created. 

Now when you're ready to create an invoice, create a credit memo using the same service item to this customer. Then, apply it to the invoice. 

Here's an article to guide you more with this process:  Enter and apply credit memos and delayed credits in QuickBooks Online.

Let me know if you have further questions, @jsedigo2. I'd be here to help you some more.