When I record a deposit to an account of mine, is the source of the funds the "PAYEE", or am I?

bob2021

I found a useful thread (in the QUICKEN CLASSIC FOR WINDOWS forum, but that likely doesn't matter)— however that thread is closed.

The following from that thread makes sense to me (my emphasis):

"In the case of a deposit, you are the payee, but the payor is what is recorded because you own the account so that isn't the important part for the transaction, the payor is in this case." (-forum user Chris_QPW)

With that logic, the name of a bank that I received an interest deport from, or a person who wrote me a check, is entered in the PAYEE field.

However, when I looked in help (a link from my Quicken app): info.quicken.com/mac/ I see this:

"Payee (default)

Shows the name of the person or business paid or receiving the deposit."

My interpretation is this is for when I pay a person or business (that is obvious), but if I get paid interest by a bank, or someone writes me a check, entering the name of the person or business that paid me in the Payee field (of a deposit transaction) is not discussed. PAYEE should be the person or business paying me, correct?

The user in the thread I mentioned also postulates an explanation of the PAYEE terminology use, and it sounds reasonable to me: "They had to pick one term, and they picked payee, they maybe should have picked something more generic, because never payee or payor is going to be correct for all transactions. Between Payee and Payor, Payee is the better choice because you have more transactions where you pay people in most accounts, than they pay you (as long as you aren't a business)."

RickO

Think of it like this: the Payee field is also Payor. I would not put yourself in the Payee field for deposits. If you do that, you'll not be able to differentiate or report on various Payors. Just put the Payor in the Payee field and ignore the terminology difference "ee" vs "or".

NotACPA

There are no rules re: Payee vs Payor. It's entirely personal preference, and whatever makes sense to you.

RickO

Think of it like this: the Payee field is also Payor. I would not put yourself in the Payee field for deposits. If you do that, you'll not be able to differentiate or report on various Payors. Just put the Payor in the Payee field and ignore the terminology difference "ee" vs "or".

maxwelwp

In my mind in order to be technically correct, one should be prompted to fill in both fields when receiving income or a deposit. Each is different (A payor is the party who makes a payment, while a payee is the party who receives it) and generically assigning to a single term such as "payee" is not accurate.

Suppose you and your wife both receive a deposit from Social Security Administration. Assigning both deposits to Social Security Administration in the payee field negates who received the payment while assigning the individual who received the payment (the payee) negates where the deposit came from. In either case an entry describing where it came from or who received it has to be qualified in the memo field.

Adding a field for payor and payee allows the transaction to be properly recorded and allows the various reports to accurately depict the detail of the income transaction.

Jim_Harman

It is a little confusing. In some QWin reports that column is called "Description."

In the case of deposits from Social Security, I use two different "Payees" - Social Security Jim and Social Security Xxx.

RickO

another option, and a better one for some reason reasons, is to use a single payee name and use tags to differentiate which person receive the payment