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January 29, 2021
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How to record income from a cash transaction

  • January 29, 2021
  • 1 reply
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Someone purchased a product from me and used cash to pay for it. I need to record this income, but am not sure how to do it in QuickBooks online. 

 

I thought creating a Journal Entry may be the best way, but when I hit save and close, I received the known "please balance the debits & credits" error. This is the second time I've tried to make a journal entry with the same result - have yet to make one successfully. I have seen that this is an ongoing issue that's surprisingly yet to be resolved. So... what's the alternative?

Best answer by CaitlinOG

Hi Heli2, 

 

It's great that you've taken the initiative and searched for a solution on your own. It sounds like what you did may be correct, but I'll share some information on cash sales with you just in case. 

 

Typically when receiving a cash payment for something a customer bought, users will create a Sales receipt in order to record the sale. When doing this, they select the Undeposited funds account from the Deposit to dropdown menu. That way, the system knows that the cash has been received from the customer to pay for the product or service, but it hasn't been deposited into the bank yet. Once the money has been put into the bank, that's when a Bank deposit is created to tell the system that the funds are now deposited and that the cash is no longer on hand. 

 

The reason I suggest doing it this way is that the Bank deposit function does show the money going into the company, however it doesn't create a sales transaction. To the system, the funds will be interpreted as money that's not related to a customer buying something, but money like a deposit to balance petty cash for example. I recommend checking out the following Community articles, as they go into detail about these processes and how this workflow looks from start to finish:

 

If you're still unsure about how this process works, please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions you may have! 

1 reply

Heli2Author
January 29, 2021

I think I just figured this out... I created an account called Cash (under bank) in my Chart of Accounts. Then created a Bank Deposit to the Cash account. This records the income under the appropriate account in my Chart of Accounts, which in this case is income from product sales. Hoping this is correct!

CaitlinOGAnswer
January 29, 2021

Hi Heli2, 

 

It's great that you've taken the initiative and searched for a solution on your own. It sounds like what you did may be correct, but I'll share some information on cash sales with you just in case. 

 

Typically when receiving a cash payment for something a customer bought, users will create a Sales receipt in order to record the sale. When doing this, they select the Undeposited funds account from the Deposit to dropdown menu. That way, the system knows that the cash has been received from the customer to pay for the product or service, but it hasn't been deposited into the bank yet. Once the money has been put into the bank, that's when a Bank deposit is created to tell the system that the funds are now deposited and that the cash is no longer on hand. 

 

The reason I suggest doing it this way is that the Bank deposit function does show the money going into the company, however it doesn't create a sales transaction. To the system, the funds will be interpreted as money that's not related to a customer buying something, but money like a deposit to balance petty cash for example. I recommend checking out the following Community articles, as they go into detail about these processes and how this workflow looks from start to finish:

 

If you're still unsure about how this process works, please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions you may have! 

Heli2Author
January 30, 2021

Ah, okay. That makes much more sense. Thank you! When I initially selected that, I didn't see the option to select the income account... now I see that I have to set up products & services that will link up to the appropriate income account. I was trying to find a work-around since I wasn't planning to add these to QuickBooks. I use Square... and the reviews on the QBO Square app that links transactions are pretty poor, so I wasn't planning to use it.