Hi, Bob.
Remember that Quicken is primarily a bookkeeping program and only secondarily a program for recording tax information. We discussed this (again) several weeks ago. You should record in Quicken the actual date that you received the check, no matter when the income was earned or when it was mailed to you. (You haven't said whether this is a paycheck for employment in December, or a payment for goods sold or services performed by a business; since you are asking about H&B, I'll guess the latter.) You should keep your records according to what actually happened to you and your business. Let your customers record in their books what actually happened from their perspective. Make sure that your records are good enough so that you can reconcile any differences between what you report and what your customers say. As we said before, it is quite normal and natural that your records and your customers' (or vendors') records can show different amounts - and both are correct. Usually it's just a matter of timing, and the differences can be easily reconciled.
Laura asked, "Are you a cash or accrual based company?" And that's a key question. She added, "Individuals are all cash basis"; that is not always true, but taxpayers who have elected accrual basis reporting of their individual income are very rare.
We elect cash or accrual when we file our FIRST income tax return and it's not easy to switch later; it requires approval by the IRS. That first return for most of us was when we were teenagers in our first job and practically all of us chose cash basis and we must use that for the rest of our lives.
But if we start a business, we have to choose between cash and accrual for that business. It is quite acceptable - and sometimes required - to use the accrual method for a proprietorship business, even if we continue to use the cash basis for our non-business income. An employee who starts a business on the side might choose use the accrual method for that business but still report his wages, interest income, investment gains and other transactions on the cash basis. If he has 3 proprietorship businesses, he might choose a different method for each of them. Again, though, the choice must be made on the FIRST return for each business and then cannot be changed in later years without IRS permission.
If you choose (or chose) the cash basis, you report the income when you receive it, even if it was earned last year - or 3 years ago. If you elected the accrual method, then you report it when it is earned, even if you haven't collected it yet.
This cash-versus-accrual topic is, first of all, an accounting question. Accountants were debating it long before there ever was an income tax. ;^}
This discussion could go on for a very long time, Bob, but this is enough for now unless you have a specific question.
I've been retired for a long time. This is a subject that doesn't change often, but you should check with your own CPA to be sure that the rules are still as I remember them.
RC