Question

My opening balance is off because I had to unfile a tax return last month

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
June 4, 2020
1 reply
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Hello!
I had a messy problem last month where I had to unfile the last two HST/GST quarterly returns.

I refiled once my numbers were corrected- we had over payed previously and had to adjust.

Now in order to unfile I had to delete cheques and general journals.. now I am in the middle of my monthly reconciliation for my banking and my starting balance is very off. I ran my Previous Reconciliation Discrepancy Report and can see that the last two cheques issued to Receiver General have been deleted, therefore causing the imbalance because they were already reconciled.....

Also, in my books it says those payments were deleted.. but we did actually pay those amounts and have yet to get a return.

Now I am scared to touch anything in case it messes up my next GST/HST return.

How do I fix this?

My thought process is telling me I have to re-enter those deleted amounts as a cheque dated to when I paid them.. But do i make the cheque to receiver gen? If I issue the cheque to receiver general it will likely mess up my next return..

Please, any help would be extremely appreciated. .

Thank you

QuickBooks Desktop

L

LauraAB

Hello Bailey,

Welcome back. I can see how it would be a daunting task to take this on considering how things have seemingly gone awry so far. Don't worry, I can help you figure this out.

When you've deleted a reconciled transaction that you need to recreate in QuickBooks Desktop, it's important to recreate it with the exact dates and other details, then you'd need to go in and manually reconcile the transaction in the account register or undo the previous reconciliation and redo it to make sure things are balancing correctly. If the details of the transaction are different than what they were previously, undoing the reconciliation entirely is the method you'll want to use.

When it comes to the tax payments, when you file a sales tax return and have an amount you need to pay, QuickBooks prompts you to Pay Now or Pay Later. If you chose pay later, you can complete the payment by going to Pay Bills, checking off the bill for the Receiver General, and then pay it. Just keep in mind again the date you'll want to show it paid for and the account being used to pay it. This article can help with navigating that feature: Pay bills in QuickBooks Desktop

Once you've done that and made sure those transactions are reconciled, your beginning balance for the next reconciliation should be good to go. I'll go over manually reconciling transactions and undoing and redoing a reconciliation so you have the steps for those options.

To manually reconcile a transaction, follow these steps.

Select Company from the top menu.
Choose Chart of Accounts.
Find the transactions in question.
Click the check mark column on the transaction line to change its status.

QuickBooks Desktop gives you the opportunity to completely undo and redo reconciliations, however, which is sometimes the better route to take. What you'd want to do is undo the reconciliations until the point the opening balance is correct, then move forward with the re-reconciling. To undo a reconciliation, follow these steps.

Select Banking from the top menu.
Choose Reconcile.
Click Undo Last Reconciliation.

Here are a couple more articles that may be able to help you with this process.

To get one-on-one assistance with any of these steps, feel free to get in touch with QuickBooks Desktop support. The following article outlines how you can do that: Intuit Quickbooks Desktop software support policies

An accountant, in particular one that's familiar with QuickBooks Desktop, would also be a great resource in this situation. If you're not already working with an accountant, feel free to check out the Find an Accountant page on our website to search for QuickBooks-certified pros near you.

Have a great weekend!