Undeposited Funds is one of the most misunderstood features in QuickBooks. In fact, Intuit (the parent company of QuickBooks) even acknowledges that this is the most misunderstood feature in QuickBooks. Long story short, it allows you to receive multiple sources of income in one bank deposit but it adds an element of complexity that might not be apparent to the average user.
What’s an example of when I would use Undeposited Funds?
Think of a situation when two customers might pay you on the same day using two different checks. When you take the two checks to the bank, you can deposit them both into the bank account in one deposit. In order to streamline the process, you can use Undeposited Funds to ensure the deposit ties to the bank statement. This means you will receive a check from each customer and create both payments in QuickBooks choosing the “Undeposited Funds” account. Then, you choose the “+” in the upper right hand corner to select “Bank Deposit”. Listed in the Bank Deposit screen will be all the payments you have recently accepted. You can choose which bank account you’re depositing them into in the option at the top. Then, you can select which payments you are depositing together.
Why are there a bunch of transactions in Undeposited Funds that have already been deposited?
Unfortunately, this is the most common problem I see as a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. It means the business owner has not received an incoming payment properly. There are a few different scenarios that can happen when Undeposited Funds is wrong. The business may have created invoices to charge its customers and then re-created Sales Receipts to deposit the funds. Or, maybe the business owner went straight to the “Bank Deposit” screen upon receiving the payment and neglected to receive the payment against prior outstanding invoices. Both of these situations would cause an over statement in Accounts Receivable (because the invoice never gets cleared out) and an overstatement in Undeposited Funds.
What’s the best practice for using Undeposited Funds?
You should create an invoice or a sales receipt every time a customer owes you money. When the customer pays, you can receive the funds against the outstanding invoice or you can create a new sales receipt from scratch. Both options allow you to choose which bank account to designate the funds for. If you choose Undeposited Funds, then you will be depositing multiple customer payments in one bank deposit. However, if you’re depositing one customer payment at a time then you can just choose the proper bank account the funds will be deposited to.
How can I enter credit card fees?
Often times, our customers will want to pay with credit card. This can be accomplished through QuickBooks payments or through another processor such as Square. If you use QuickBooks payments, then the gross income is recorded along with the processing fee. However, if you use another processor such as Square, then you can use Undeposited Funds to record the fee. You can record multiple incoming payments to Undeposited Funds and then batch them to deposit to your bank account at once At the bottom of the Bank Deposit screen, you can choose a vendor, expense/fee account, enter all the data, and then input a *negative* number in the amount of the fee. When you scroll to the bottom of the screen, you’ll notice the net amount equals the total income less processing fees. It’s a miracle and now reconciling is a breeze!
If you still have questions about Undeposited Funds, don’t hesitate to reach out to Remote CPA.
Email info@remotecpa.com
Call at (317) 520-1414