Recording Transactions in QuickBooks

Recording transactions in QuickBooks can sometimes cause a lot of confusion.  See this question submitted by a reader.

Hi, I’m fairly new to using QuickBooks and while I understand how to record most normal transactions by writing checks, paying bills, and entering credit card transactions, etc., I’m sort of stumped on how to record payments that I make online.  For example, I log into the website of our credit card company and make the credit card payment there and I log into the EFTPS site to pay our payroll liabilities; how do I record these transactions in QuickBooks – because I’m not really writing a check if you follow me.  Another thing that stumps me is how to record petty cash expenditures, we have cash that we keep in an envelope and the other day I went went to the Post Office to buy stamps, I’ve recorded it in the petty cash log book, but how do I get this into QuickBooks?  Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks, Barb

Hi Barb

Thanks for stopping  by and submitting your question!

I can understand your confusion, because you really aren’t literally writing a check out of QuickBooks but yet you are faced with needing to record the payments.  Here’s what you do.

After you reconcile the credit card account (you are reconciling it aren’t you?), QuickBooks pops up a window that asks if you want to Write a Check now or enter a bill for later payment.  If you choose the Write a Check now, use the Confirmation number from your credit card payment receipt in the Check Number field in QuickBooks.  You can apply this same technique if you chose to Enter a Bill and then went through the Pay Bills option in QuickBooks – you  will want to do the Credit Card payment by itself.

With your EFTPS payment you’ll use the Acknowledgement Number when you go into Pay Liabilities and pay your payroll liabilities.

Don’t worry if you accidentally push these payment through with the “To Be Printed” option, just open your checking account register and overwrite the To be Printed field with either the Confirmation or Acknowledgement numbers.

Now Petty Cash, that’s a totally different procedure.  First look at your Chart Of Accounts list in QuickBooks to see if there is a Petty Cash Bank Account.  If there isn’t you should create one – if there record the information from the handwritten log into this account in QuickBooks by clicking on the Write Checks option and selecting the Petty Cash account.

I hope this has been helpful, if not leave a comment with any additional questions that you might have.