Applying downloaded transactions to customer invoices

John43

I am trying to apply a downloaded payment into my checking account to a client invoice and the instructions in Quicken are not working. Any help is greatly appreciated. I have Quicken 2017 H&B running Windows 10.

NotACPA

What you need is an Intermediate account to hold your payments from your clients.

When you record the payment, against the invoice, direct it to that Intermediate (AKA, Holding) account.  I call mine "Undeposited Checks".

Then, when you actually deposit the check(s) record that deposit as going into your checking account from the Intermediate account.

This way, you can associate multiple account checks (and any other funds) as being a single deposit into your checking account.

BTW, this method was adapted from Quickbooks, which does it automatically.

UKR

John,
the way Quicken is designed, you need to always enter all business transactions into the Customer Invoices (and/or the Vendor Invoices) account. That's the only way to correctly apply payments, credits or refunds to a specific invoice.
If you are talking about recording a payment from a customer that was electronically deposited to your checking account:

• First record the New Customer Payment transaction in the Customer Invoices account register. In the data entry form select the invoice this payment applies to and also select the checking account to which the electronic deposit was sent.
• Now download transactions into your checking account. When the deposit transaction arrives, match the downloaded transaction to the just created Customer Payment transaction.

If you do it the other way around, by creating a transaction in your checking account and making it a transfer to the Customer Invoices account, Quicken will not properly record this as a payment and you will have issues marking an invoice as paid.

John43

Thank you for the quick response.

Not sure why I need an intermediate account. I can receive payment for invoices and have it post a deposit into my checking account and that works fine.

The issue I have is the help file in my version of quicken steps me through a process of downloading my payments from my bank and then being able to apply these to an invoice in my invoice account.

Quicken support continues to say yes this can be done, but the instructions they send me say nothing about about how to link the downloaded transaction to my invoice payment.

These are the instructions from my version of Quicken. I am trying to see if anyone has been able to get these steps to work?




Thank you

Unknown

if you create an invoice payment before you accept the download, you will not need the intermediate account and the download will show as a match.  Quicken doesn't like to re-direct an accepted transaction.  If you don't follow this process you will also have trouble with the pre-canned balance sheet report.

John43

John,
the way Quicken is designed, you need to always enter all business transactions into the Customer Invoices (and/or the Vendor Invoices) account. That's the only way to correctly apply payments, credits or refunds to a specific invoice.
If you are talking about recording a payment from a customer that was electronically deposited to your checking account:

• First record the New Customer Payment transaction in the Customer Invoices account register. In the data entry form select the invoice this payment applies to and also select the checking account to which the electronic deposit was sent.
• Now download transactions into your checking account. When the deposit transaction arrives, match the downloaded transaction to the just created Customer Payment transaction.

If you do it the other way around, by creating a transaction in your checking account and making it a transfer to the Customer Invoices account, Quicken will not properly record this as a payment and you will have issues marking an invoice as paid.

UKR, this does sound like it would work based on all the playing around I have done with this. Thank you!

So I am not crazy, the instructions I pasted into my previous comment will not work?

John

John43

I was not creating an invoice payment before accepting the download.

I was creating the invoice, printing and sending to my client.

They would send payment to my bank.

I would download the transaction and then try and follow the steps I pasted in above and cannot get this to work.

RandyP

John,

You can do what you describe. After you download new transactions from your bank, edit the transactions as follows:

1. Locate the transaction you want to apply to an invoice.
2. For "Payee," enter, or select, the customer's name from the list.
3. For "Category," open the drop-down list enter the name of the invoice account in brackets. (Ex:  [account name]), or select the invoice account name from the list.
4. Press Enter to accept the changes.

Repeat the steps above for each transaction you want to apply to an invoice. If portion of a deposit is payment for materials/supplies, split the transaction to apply a portion to the invoice account and a portion to your [Reimbursables] account, and a portion as a Tip (if applicable).

When you are finished directing the flow of funds for all the necessary transactions, open your invoice account register. You will see all the invoice payments as Type "PMT". At that point, all you need to do for each payment is to enter the appropriate invoice number in the "Invoice #" column and press Enter.

Voila! Those payments will now be applied to their respective invoices.

Hope this helps.

mshiggins

I was not creating an invoice payment before accepting the download.

I was creating the invoice, printing and sending to my client.

They would send payment to my bank.

I would download the transaction and then try and follow the steps I pasted in above and cannot get this to work.

From C. D. Bales:


"Quicken support continues to say yes this can be done, but the instructions they send me say nothing about about how to link the downloaded transaction to my invoice payment".


Contrary to what you have been told previously in this discussion, you most certainly can initially record the invoice payment in your checking account.


When you initially record the payment of an invoice in a checking account (something that is typical for those who download such payments), you need to adhere to a couple of absolute requirements.


1.) You must make sure the Payee of the deposit in the checking account has the EXACT same name as the Customer of the invoice you intend that deposit to pay. Typically this is done by using Memorized Payees; but it can also be done by selecting the transaction in the Downloaded Transactions window and modify the payee that then appears in the register, before you click Accept. Or after you Accept the transaction, but before you assign the Category.

2.) You must then Categorize the checking account deposit as a Transfer into the Invoice (Accounts Receivable) account where the invoice is recorded. You can do that before clicking the Accept button, or after you have accepted the transaction, but before you assign the proper Payee name.

3.) Then you must open either the resulting PMT transaction in the invoice account, or the INVC transaction in the invoice account that you want paid; and apply the PMT transaction to the INVC transaction.


For situations where a single payment transaction will be applied to a single invoice, you can use the process previously posted in this discussion ... but that process is not necessary.


For situations where your checking account payment deposit transaction needs to be part of a split transaction: if you use the previously posted approach, you will not be able to change the checking account transaction to accommodate the split: if you do, Quicken will un-apply the payment from the invoice.

John43

Thank you Randy for the straight forward complete instructions. I will give this a try.

John43

I was not creating an invoice payment before accepting the download.

I was creating the invoice, printing and sending to my client.

They would send payment to my bank.

I would download the transaction and then try and follow the steps I pasted in above and cannot get this to work.

C.D. thank you for the detailed explanation.