Developing a Quickbook file from paper data

The way to handle this to use the Undeposited Funds account and correctly record monies paid, the method of payment and amount. It sounds like you may have just recorded payment in full per invoice rather than breaking payments out if they occurred in more than one form.

If you're using invoices then you record the actual amount of payment for any payment method against the invoice. If a customer paid $50 by check, $50 by cash and $50 by direct deposit then you record three separate payments by the customer, each applying to its corresponding invoice, and all going into Undeposited Funds.

Now you can group them however they actually went into the bank. The direct deposit likely shows up as an individual deposit so you use Make Deposits and select the $50 direct deposit then save. The check and cash may have been deposited together for a $100 deposit. Go to Make Deposits and select the two $50 payments that make that amount.

You may want to talk to the company's accountant to see if you can keep the work you've done by reconciling deposits by total dollar amount rather than by specific amount & date (IOW if you have three deposits totalling $5000 and the bank statement says there were 13 deposits totalling $5000 then your accountant might allow you to leave it as is). Its either that or void all deposits and re-record them correctly. Or you can start over but you'd lose all that invoice entry work.

Thank you; I see how it's done now. "Undeposited Funds" and then "Payments to Deposit" is the way to go. This will allow me to add several payments until they reach the sum of a composite deposit before actually depositing them into a bank account.

Fortunatelly, I had made a backup before reconciling the bank statements, so I'll delete all the erroneous total payments, and just leave the invoices. Then I can reconcile the bank statements again. I'll tag unidentified large bank deposits with UNKNOWN CUSTOMER. Then I can put partial payments together using the method you suggest and carefully deplete each UNKNOWN CUSTOMER deposit.

I'm new to Quickbooks, as you've probably guessed, and I certainly appreciate your help. Thanks.

For the payments given to the manager, where are the payment coupons to show who paid? With those you would record each payment against the appropriate invoice. It should not make a difference in recording payments if they sent their payment in or gave them to the treasurer. All payments need to have the coupon identified. You may also need to improve your payment process a little bit. Our property manager keeps all coupons plus gets all of the checks paid to the lock-box. Those given directly to her are copied for her records and are attached to the deposit slip(copied of course). You seem to be missing some info to complete your job. Plus you are SOL if someone ever disputes a payment.

I couldn't agree with you more. The former treasurer was sloppy, secretive and kept incomplete paper records and that's why I've got problems. The new treasurer asked me to help computerize the books, but I will resign if better records are not kept. Hence forth all checks recieved will be stapled to the deposit slip (copies) and the total checked, as you suggested. Thanks for your comments.