It provides for a Date difference between when you got the funds and when you did the banking, as well. Here is how I teach it: If the customers' due date is the 15th, and you get mail from the 12th to the 15th, but don't do the banking deposit until the 17th, you want to show the customers have paid on time, so that separation of steps provides that separation for date of each activity: Payment is separate from Deposit of that/those payments. Also, I like to Organize my deposits into personal checks and  Bank-issued checks, because I have had occasion where the Bank issued checks were bundled in an envelope (and held up at the processing service), making the customers' payments late, and they have had to take it up with their banks.