How do I process GoCardless receipts into the bank?

Question

I've been drafted in to help a friend whose book-keeper has gone off sick - she is not available to ask questions. I have never been on this side of a Direct Debit mandate, so the learning curve is steep.

The bank feed shows GoCardless receipts in every day, listing them under 'For Review', but I can't see how to 'Add' them. How do I process them so the total appears in the bank register and the details get posted to the customers? And they leave 'For Review'

I can see that she made use of the Undeposited Funds account, so I have tried categorising one of the receipts as a transfer from the Undeposited Funds to the Current Account, but I still can't see the detail of the payment and am uncertain as to how to clear out the UF account.

Actually, on checking the current account's 'bank register', I see the GoCardless receipts do seem to be posted correctly!! So, what do I do with them under 'For Review'?

MagsMc · Accepted Answer

Many thanks for your answer @RoseJillB , I have been able to use all of your advice.

However, I would have got to that stage much quicker had you started with one simple clarifying fact:

GoCardless payments appearing under 'For Review' means something has gone wrong with the automated process.

I did not know this; I thought all GC payments arrived into 'For Review' and was baffled as to what to do with them. The option to Add was there, I was just certain it was not the correct action, and changing it to Match instead of Categorise also looked wrong. I felt stupid for not not being able to process a simple transaction. I scoured the articles and community Q&A and did not find a single reference to my situation (GC payments in 'For Review') or any mention of the automated process not completing, or how to trouble-shoot it.

For anyone else in this situation, the answer is to export/download the Payout transaction from GoCardless and compare the entries in that to the entries in your Undeposited Funds account. Had I known that yesterday morning, I'd have been finished by lunchtime rather than 8pm. Based on my experience of dealing with 7 working days worth of GoCardless Payouts (>1 per day), the automated process fails in 4 scenarios:

Euro payments - fair enough, you need to tweak the exchange rate to get the pennies right;
Extra debits - specifically for failed DDs (don't know if there are other reasons). Again fair enough, that needs attention, and the resolution in the Deposit is easy enough.;
Invoice is not open - again fair enough. If the customer has already paid the invoice by BACS/FP then also by DD, you need to know so you can refund them. You enter the sales payment on account and take it from there;
Reference is anything other than "Payment for QuickBooks Invoice xxxx" - this one is not fair enough. Even a reference of "Invoice xxxx" is insufficient. IMHO, a valid mandate and a valid (open) invoice number should be sufficient.

RoseJillB · Answer

Worry less, @MagsMc. I'll walk you through matching your receipts from GoCardless in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

When connecting your GoCardless application and collecting direct debit payments, the application automatically creates transactions in QBO. This is to record the payment and any subsequent deposits associated with the payments.

Concerning the receipts under your For Review tab, we can match this to the transactions posted to the undeposited funds by creating a bank deposit. An undeposited funds account is used to store money that hasn't been deposited yet into the actual bank account. Also, we'll have to create a bank deposit to put the money into the correct bank account. Here's how:

Click the + New icon and select Bank Deposit.
Under the Account dropdown, select which bank account you want to put the money into.
Mark check each transaction related to the receipts from your bank feeds.
Make sure to check the total amount of the selected transactions matches your deposit slip.
Lastly, Save and new or Save and Close.

You mentioned that you were unable to see the option to Add them it could be that you're seeing the Match as it detects a match entered within QBO. This time, to categorise the receipts on your bank feeds and clear the amount from your undeposited funds at the same time, we'll need to Match them to avoid duplicates. I'll show you how:

Go to the Transactions menu and select Bank Transactions.
Click the bank tile where the amount syncs.
Locate the transactions synced from GoCardless, and click Match in the Action tab.

Moreover, we can undo the categorisation of the transaction you manually transfer to the current account. This is to properly match it to the correct record in QuickBooks and clear the amount in the undeposited funds. Here's how you can undo a categorisation:

Go back to the Bank Transactions tab.
Navigate to the Categorised section and click Undo under the Action tab.

Furthermore, you can visit this resource to reconcile your account and avoid discrepancies in the future: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online.

Please don't hesitate to reply to this post if you require additional assistance managing your bank feeds. The Community always has your back. Take care!

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