Why Doesn't a Transaction in QuickBooks Match Mindbody Any More?
If you have found a transaction in QuickBooks that no longer matches what Mindbody shows, or income that seems to have appeared or disappeared without anyone touching QuickBooks, this article explains what happened.
What you are seeing
It usually turns up in one of these ways:
- A sale is in QuickBooks but you can’t find it in Mindbody any more.
- A sale in QuickBooks shows a different amount, date, client or payment method than the same sale in Mindbody.
- A member’s balance is right in Mindbody and wrong in QuickBooks.
- Your income for a past month has changed in one system but not the other.
Nothing was added or removed in QuickBooks on its own. In almost every case, the sale was changed in Mindbody after the day it happened.
Mindbody lets you change the past, and most owners don’t know it
This surprises people, so it is worth saying plainly. Mindbody allows a staff member to go back to a sale from last week or last month and change it. Depending on which permissions your staff have, they can:
- Move the sale to a different client
- Change the sale date
- Change the location
- Change the payment method
- Change the sales rep or commission recipient
- Void the sale entirely, including a credit card sale
- Return or refund the sale
Most of the time this is someone tidying up a genuine mistake, and it is exactly what the feature is for. None of it requires your approval, though, and none of it is announced.
Why QuickBooks doesn’t follow the change
FlexBooks syncs once a day, and each sync reads the previous day’s sales from Mindbody. Once a day has been written into QuickBooks, FlexBooks does not go back over it.
So when a sale from last Tuesday is edited today, QuickBooks keeps what Mindbody said last Tuesday, because that is the only version of that day FlexBooks ever saw.
That turns out to be useful, and it is worth understanding before you change anything. When Mindbody overwrites a sale, the original version is gone from Mindbody. QuickBooks still has it, because FlexBooks wrote it down on the day it happened. Your books are not simply a copy of Mindbody. They are a dated, independent record of what Mindbody reported at the time, which is what makes them worth reconciling against.
A difference between the two systems is telling you something
Because of that, a sale that disagrees between QuickBooks and Mindbody is not noise. It is a signal that the sale was edited after the fact, and it is usually the only way an owner finds out at all.
Most of what turns up this way is ordinary and easily explained. Now and then it is something you are glad to have seen. Either way, running the two systems side by side gives you a second opinion on your own point of sale, which is not something Mindbody can give you on its own.
So it is worth looking into a mismatch rather than simply correcting it. The correction takes a minute; knowing why it happened is the part with the value in it.
How to control who can change a past sale
Editing a past sale is controlled by staff permissions, and you can turn it off. In Mindbody, go to your Staff Permissions screen and look at the Settings section. The four that matter here are:
| Permission | What it lets staff do |
|---|---|
| Manager corrections - Edit Sales | Edit a sale after it has been made, including the client, payment method, commission recipient and sale date |
| Void/edit past sales | Void a past sale, including credit card sales |
| Edit sale date | Change the date a sale was recorded on |
| Issue sale refunds | Refund a past sale |
Most businesses give these to managers and leave them off for front desk staff. Mindbody’s own guides are Staff Permissions - Settings and How to edit a sale.
One thing Mindbody already prevents for you: the payment method on a sale paid by credit card or bank account cannot be changed by anyone, at any permission level. Only cash, check and similar payment methods can be changed after the fact.
What to do instead of editing the past
If something from a previous day was recorded wrongly, enter a transaction today that corrects it, and leave the original alone.
Your books then show what happened and what you did about it, which is what your accountant wants to see and what an auditor will ask for. It also means FlexBooks picks the correction up on the next sync, so both systems end up agreeing without anyone having to fix QuickBooks by hand.
The same principle applies inside QuickBooks. Reversing an entry with a new one is safer than deleting it.
Something has already been changed. How do I fix QuickBooks?
Correct it in QuickBooks with a new entry rather than by deleting the old one. What the entry should be depends on what changed:
- A bank payment that failed after it synced. This one is not a staff edit at all. See What Happens When an EFT or Bank Payment Fails?
- A refund or a chargeback. See Refunds, Chargebacks & Negative Transactions.
- An edited amount, date or category. A journal entry for the difference, dated today.
- A voided sale. The original sale is still in QuickBooks. Reverse it with a credit memo or a journal entry, dated the day it was voided.
If you aren’t sure what the entry should be, send us the Mindbody Sale ID and we will tell you exactly what to enter.