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drdavidpalfaro
November 28, 2020
Question

Does anyone know how to match a paper check to a payroll paydate and have it in the register for the day it was cashed? Mine is stuck the date it was posted.

  • November 28, 2020
  • 1 reply
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1 reply

Rebecca R
Rebecca R
November 30, 2020

Hello drdavidpalfaro,

It's great that you're using QuickBooks Online Payroll to manage both your staff and accounting data all in one place. It's important to be able to match these transactions with your bank transactions and I can help explain this.

When you create a pay cheque within QuickBooks Online Payroll, you're able to select the pay period and the pay date. Once you process the pay run, it posts to the general ledger as of the date that the payroll was processed, not the pay date. This isn't able to be changed as once the pay run is processed, the pay amount is then considered as a payable to your staff, which is why the system uses the processing date as the posting date.

You don't need to worry though, as the transactions can still be matched to each other even if they don't have the exact same date. All you have to do is:

  1. Find the downloaded payroll transaction with the Match option in the Action column (this one will be dated the day that the cheque was cashed).
  2. Select the downloaded transaction to expand the view.
  3. Review the Matching records found. This is where you'll find the matching transaction you already entered in QuickBooks that are dated as the posting date.
  4. If this is the correct match, close the open transaction.
  5. Select Match.

You can find more information about matching your transactions here.

If that doesn't quite hit the mark, or if you have any other questions, please let me know!

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drdavidpalfaroAuthor
December 1, 2020

Hello!

 

Yes that is what I was doing. The problem was it was moving the bank transaction to the posting date, which throws off the ledger and messes up month ends.

 

For example:

 

Paycheck created July29th, Deposited Aug 5th. The software identifies the bank transaction as happening on the 5th and identifies the match, but when I complete the match, it moves the transaction to the 29th! It should be vice versa.

The same thing is happening with my payroll tax. After my last payroll of the month I run the tax wizard and set up my payment at my bank. It records the tax payment, but then when the transaction happens at the bank, and I match it, it moves the transaction to the date it was originally posted, not when the transaction occurred. Again, throwing off the ledger. 

I have gone through and made journal entries to correct the dates so that the day end in quickbooks lines up with the day end in my bank account. It was a very long and tedious process and I do not know if this will lead to other problems.

 

Is this a common problem?

L
LauraAB
December 1, 2020

Hello again,

 

Thanks for shedding more light on your situation and why this is a concern for you while using QuickBooks Online Payroll and matching in the bank feeds. I can appreciate how the cheque not being deposited until a few days later can impact your reporting and how the program matching it to the posting entry date would cause issues. I can go over this with you.

 

What you describe is exactly how the program is designed to behave when using QuickBooks Online Payroll. When you match the transaction from the bank feed to a payroll entry in QuickBooks Online, the program matches it to the posting date to keep your payroll reporting accurate. Payroll reporting relies heavily on pay dates and pay periods to fill out forms like ROEs and PD7As, so if the program were to match to the later date instead, that would negatively impact that reporting.

 

That being said, your workaround of using a journal entry for those instances where you need to move the funds after matching should work fine for you. In that case, you're not erasing the original payroll posting entry, but rather creating an additional entry to move the funds to when you need them to impact your accounts.

 

You can also check with an accountant to see if there's another method you could potentially use to lighten the load of tasks you have to complete for this process. If you don't have an accountant, the My Accountant tab includes the Find a pro to help button, which redirects you to our database of QuickBooks-certified accountants near you. If you already do have an accountant, however, you can consider including them as a user on your account. That same tab has an accountant invite field to get you started.

 

I encourage you to submit feedback about how this is affecting your books and your workflow. The feedback left via the steps in our How do I submit feedback? article are forwarded to our engineers, which helps them learn how users are working with QuickBooks Online's features and what changes they can maybe make.

 

I hope that helps. I'll be around if you have more questions about QuickBooks' features, though, so don't hesitate to reach out again.

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