Handling Unapplied Payments
Handling Unapplied Payments
The Unapplied Cash Payment Income and Unapplied Cash Bill Payment Expense accounts are special cash-basis accounts that QuickBooks Online creates automatically. QBO uses them when payments are entered but not connected to an invoice/bill, or when the payment is dated before the invoice it applies to.
Read more at Intuit: What’s Unapplied Cash Payment?
When this occurs in the MBO-to-QBO sync
Pre-payments
When members pay before their membership charge posts, QuickBooks sees a payment dated before the invoice. Under cash-basis reporting, QBO reports that payment as income in Unapplied Cash Payment Income until the invoice links to it.
On the invoice date, QBO shows a negative in Unapplied Cash Payment for the same amount, moving income to the correct category.
Tip: Any negative amount in this report is a transaction attached to a payment.
Example: Amy pays on January 13th for a membership due January 24th. Both transactions net to $0 in Unapplied Cash Payments over the full date range.
To fix (optional): Change the invoice date to before the payment date if you don’t want to see both in Unapplied Cash Payments. Do not change the payment date.
Payment not linked
On rare occasions the sync does not link a payment to its invoice. Unapplied Cash Payment shows the payment without the invoice.
To fix:
- Open the Unapplied Cash Payments report and click the transaction amount.
- Check the box for the invoice to connect.
- Click Save and Close.
Initial sync
When starting a sync, you choose a start date. Payments after the start date may sync while older invoices do not, leaving unapplied payments.
To fix:
- Identify which member has the unapplied payment.
- In Mindbody, find the invoice charge date for that payment.
- In QBO, create the missing invoice (+ New > Invoice) with the correct date, product, and amount.
- Click Receive Payment and link to the existing payment (Amount Received should show $0.00).
How to clear a growing unapplied balance
- Run the Unapplied Cash Payment Income report for all dates.
- For each positive balance, find the matching invoice in Mindbody.
- Link payment to invoice in QBO, or create the missing invoice.
- Re-run the report to confirm the balance is zero.