Deposit Checks from multiple Payees

You could mimic what QuickBooks does:

Setup a dummy bank acount. Manually record each check with the appropriate Payee names. Then do a single bank transfer from the dummy bank account to your real bank account for the total of the deposit. Now your bank downloaded transactions will match your register.

That's how I do it, when I do an online update I see each check downloaded as a separate transaction from the financial institution and my statement shows them that way also.

I enter ALL checks INDIVIDUALLY into Quicken, physically accumulate them between physical trips to the ATM, then deposit. When I reconcile the monthly bank statement, it usually balances. If not, I manually add up the cheques in the deposit and compare them to the paper slip from the bank--if out of whack, it's usually because I did something dyslexic.

Hi, trvlnmny.

We discuss this fairly often here. The answer really is very easy. It's kind of like Laura's suggestion - only easier.

Just create a new Asset Account in the Banking group - but not a bank account - and call it Undeposited Checks. When you receive a check, put it here, showing who gave you the check. When you deposit one check or a group of checks, credit this account for the total. It should show a zero balance after each deposit. Each downloaded deposit entry should match one of those group deposit totals.

If you cash one of those checks, rather than deposit it, just make an entry EITHER in the Undeposited Checks account OR in your Cash account - not in both - showing the transfer from one to the other.

That's what I've been doing for years, and others here report similar practices.

RC

Yes, and very easily. I do that all the time.

In your check register, enter any description/payer you like, and enter the total amount (if you already know the total).

Then click on Split and enter each check separately. You can enter the name of each payer, and the category for each check and the amount for each check.

If you initially entered the total then when you have entered all the checks you will see that Quicken is verifying that the total is correct. If you did not initially enter the total then Quicken will be calculating the total for you and just click on the "Adjust" button and Quicken will enter that in your register.

If you ever do a search for a payer it will show up in the report.

Bernie

There is no way to record multiple payee names in the payee name field for a single transaction. A split transaction contains only one payee name field ... no matter how many split lines there are.

If you plan to record a single Quicken split transaction representing checks written by multiple payees, the only place you can put the payee name is in the Memo field of each split line. While that does "record" the payee name, it has at least one drawback: any report/display/search based on the payee name field, will not find any of those payees in the split transactions.

Reports by payee will not include those split lines with the correct payee. Find/Replace will have to be done at least twice for each payee (if payee name is the field you need to "Find", or "Replace").

Also you have restricted the number of characters available in the Memo field to record "memo type" information. And mixing any other text with payee names in the Memo field will pretty much eliminate the benefits of Find/Replace to correct payee names for those transactions.

And in your method, you will not be able to select the payee name from the normal payee name drop down list, so the odds of entering the same payee with slightly different spellings is increased, adding to the problem of locating transactions for a given payee.

[The last problem can be overcome if one is downloading transactions. You can enter multiple individual transactions for different payees (using the drop down payee list to choose payee names), then when the actual deposit transaction clears the bank and is downloaded, you can use Manual Match to match the downloaded transaction to the multiple register transactions that it represent. Quicken will create a split transaction for you with the payee names in the Memo field ... at least this way the payee names should always be spelled the same.]

I think the intermediate account approach is far superior than any other I know of.

Hi, John.

All good points. One point none of us has made yet is that "it depends". :^}

If multiple-payor deposits are rare, then any of our suggested solutions will work. But if such deposits happen often, than a more complex approach might be advisable.

My suggestion was for an Undeposited Checks account. That works fine for my family since we usually have just one "checks cashed" transaction a month, for a couple of CD interest checks. It should still work if we deposited a handful of checks once or twice a month; our deposit entry could be a Split transaction with each check on a single split line, where we could enter the payor's name in the Memo field.

But if we were running a business or otherwise received dozens of checks a week, this might become burdensome. Collections for cash sales would present one set of problems; receipts on account from credit customers would require more effort to maintain the receivable balance for each customer. Then a more-formal accounting program (QuickBooks?) might make more sense.

In any case, I agree with you that "the intermediate account approach" is the best solution.

One nit-pick: several posters have referred to accounting for receipts "by payee". But, for a check I've received, the payee is ME. I'd want to sort the checks "by payor" - those who wrote the checks. But I know what you meant, obviously, and "payee" is easier to say than "payor" - or "drawer", which is the term for the person who "draws" a check to draw money from his bank account.

RC

No argument; my comments were all based strictly on using Quicken.

I do know the distinction between payees and payors; but Quicken doesn't make it.

Quicken non-investment account registers title the payee/payor field, "Payee". When you create a Scheduled Transaction - even if it is a deposit transaction - the field for the name is called "Payee". There are "Memorized Payees", any of whom can be payors. There are the report Customize tabs for "Payees", though the names listed there also include payors. And there are Quicken reports "by Payee" which include both payees and payors with no distinction.

To avoid lengthy descriptions in my posts, which will often just be telling a poster what they already know, I usually try to start by using Quicken's terms. [I think there may be a Murphy's law for descriptions: if you describe something in detail, the reader will already know what you wrote; if you leave out the detail, the reader will not know it. Given the choice, I confess, I take the easy way for me. I do remain open to adding details in follow up posts, when asked.]

Hi, John.

OK. I concede. ;^)

And the thread started with "from...Payees" in the Subject. ;^}

RC

I am the treasurer of an HOA and always have multiple deposits. I simply enter "Deposit" as the payee name in the register, go the SPLIT, and use each homeowner's name as the category and enter the individual amount for each payor. If I want to know if Homeowner A has made all monthly payments, I can simply run a report for the "category" (homeownr's name) and all deposits for that homeowner will show up. When downloading the deposit information from the bank, the total amount of the deposit will show, but the "transaction" itself will have the split categories.

I take a completely different approach from what I have read here. I instruct the bank to make each check a separate deposit.

Which is what the OP originally said he/she knew he/she could do - "I know I could post them as individual deposits ...".

The question is 'WHY'? That's called the tail wagging the dog. Is there anything that one gains by this that one can not also do with the other single deposit suggestions?

(I also use a single deposit approach and wonder if I'm missing anything by doing so....so far, so good in my case!)

No intermediate account is necessary to retain the "payor" name in the Quicken payee field. And no extra transaction is needed to transfer from the intermediate account to the deposit account.

How important that is, is a question for each individual to decide.

Because that's the way my financial institutions do it, I didn't ask them to, it's the way they do, all of them!

You mean you don't have the choice of writing a single deposit ticket with 2 transactions included and one sum vs. two seperate transactions??

Tnx - I reread one of your earlier posts in this thread John. What I am most concerned about is being able to "find" transactions (ie: payments) by people, and the ones I need to find I always include their names in the memo field. I do understand that one can't report on these as payors (or payees?!) this way as you pointed out, since that field is just marked 'Deposit' with the names in the split memo fields. For me, that's ok. I don't need totals by people, just being able to find the individual transactions via a search.

For others, I do understand that this might not suffice.

Of course I do, I can enter multiple checks in a single deposit and use the split transaction feature to identify each one.... but.... When I download transactions from my financial institutions they will show each check as a separate deposit, my monthly statement will show each check as a separate deposit so why in heck would I enter them into Quicken as a single deposit?

What bank do you use? Most bank will enter a lump sum that represents the total on each deposit slip. That's how it will show up on the bank statement.

Imagine you are a retail operation that takes checks as a form of payment. Your deposit slip has 10 checks. This would cause a major bank rec nightmares if that single deposit shows up as 10 entries on the bank statement. Do they charge extra for depositing too many checks?

I don't use a bank, I use Merrill Lynch, Prudential, Paine Webber (later UBS), RBC, etc. They all do it the exact same way.