Every payment you receive has to land in an account. In SeroBooks you decide which, the way QuickBooks Desktop does: either straight into a bank account (the Deposit To account on the payment), or into Undeposited Funds, a holding account where payments wait until you record the trip to the bank with Make Deposits.
Undeposited Funds exists because the bank does not see your payments one by one. Fifty card payments on a Tuesday reach the bank on Wednesday as one amount; three cheques taken to the bank together appear on the statement as one deposit. If each payment went straight into the bank account, the books would have fifty lines that never match the statement's one. With Undeposited Funds, the payments collect there and one deposit moves them into the bank as the single amount the statement shows.
Deposit To and Payment Account
- Deposit To appears on Receive Payments, on Enter Sales Receipts and on an invoice paid on the spot. It is the bank or cash account the money went into. It opens on the account you used last on that kind of screen, or on the account the payment method normally posts to, or on your first bank account.
- A split payment is one payment per part, each with its own Deposit To: left empty, the cash part goes to the cash account and a card part to the account card payments post to. With the preference below turned on, every part goes to Undeposited Funds and is listed on its own in Payments to Deposit.
- Payment Account appears on Pay Bills and Payment Runs. It is the bank or credit card account a bill was paid from. It is always shown.
The preference: Use Undeposited Funds as a default deposit to account
This preference decides whether you are asked for a Deposit To account at all.
- On: every payment you receive goes to Undeposited Funds and the Deposit To field is not shown. Sales receipts say Deposit To: Undeposited Funds (your preference). You bank the payments later with Make Deposits.
- Off: Receive Payments and sales paid on the spot show a Deposit To field, and the money goes straight to the account you choose there. You can still choose Undeposited Funds in that field for a particular payment.
To change it:
- Open Company ▸ Accounting Setup (also reachable from Edit ▸ Preferences… ▸ Payments, then Accounting Setup (Undeposited Funds, deposit accounts)).
- In the Payments card, tick or untick Use Undeposited Funds as a default deposit to account. It saves straight away.
The change applies to new payments only. A payment already entered stays where it was posted; to move one, open it and change its Deposit To.
Setting up Undeposited Funds
Open Reports ▸ Banking ▸ Deposit Register. If the account is not ready, the screen says so and offers to do the work.
Undeposited Funds is not set up yet — no account is mapped. Choose Set up Undeposited Funds. SeroBooks explains what it will do and asks you to confirm:
- use an account called Undeposited Funds if your chart already has one, or create it;
- route card and cheque payments to it, leaving alone any payment method you have already routed somewhere else;
- start from today. Card and cheque payments from before today went straight to the bank and stay that way, so they are not offered for depositing.
Cash keeps going to the cash account. You can change any of it later in Accounting Setup. Choose Set it up to go ahead, or Not now.
Nothing is routed to Undeposited Funds — the account exists, but no payment method posts to it, so nothing will ever arrive. Choose Route card and cheque here to point card and cheque payments at it.
Or choose an account yourself in Setup opens Accounting Setup, where the Undeposited Funds row names the account and the Where each way of paying lands card routes each payment method. See Accounting Setup.
Setting up Undeposited Funds creates a ledger account, so the role needs Add Account on the Chart of Accounts.
The Deposit Register
Once set up, Reports ▸ Banking ▸ Deposit Register shows the payments waiting in Undeposited Funds and the deposits already made. The heading says how many payments are waiting and their total.
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Tick box | Tick the payments to put on the next deposit. |
| Received | The date the payment was received. |
| Customer | Who paid. |
| Invoice | The invoice the payment was for. Blank for money received on account — a credit the customer left, or a payment with no invoice. |
| Method | The payment method. |
| Detail | The payment's reference, such as a cheque number. |
| Amount | The payment amount. |
A payment's credit left over is listed with the payment: see Make Deposits. Double-click a row to open its invoice. See Cheque, Deposit and Credit Card registers for the rest of the screen.
When the account and the list disagree
If the balance of the Undeposited Funds account is not the same as the total of the payments listed, an amber note says The account holds $… but the payments listed come to $…, a difference of $…, and lists what caused the difference with how to fix each cause. When nothing in the ledger explains it, it tells you to open the account in the General Ledger to see every movement on it. The usual causes are an opening balance or a general journal entry posted to Undeposited Funds by hand.
What happens in the books
- Receiving a payment to Undeposited Funds: debit Undeposited Funds, credit Accounts Receivable (or income, on a sales receipt). Any part left as the customer's credit is also debited to Undeposited Funds and credited to Customer Deposits, and waits to be banked with the rest of the payment.
- Depositing it: debit the bank account, credit Undeposited Funds.
Undeposited Funds is an asset account. Its balance at any moment is the money you have received but not yet banked. On the Company Snapshot it shows as money to deposit, and the To Do List and Reminders show Money to Deposit when payments are waiting.
Deleting a payment that was deposited
If you void or delete a customer payment that is already on a deposit, SeroBooks warns This transaction has been deposited. If you delete it, the deposit will be affected. Going ahead changes that deposit's total, which will no longer match the bank statement. Check the deposit afterwards.
Common problems
A payment is not in the Payments to Deposit list. It was posted straight to a bank account (its Deposit To was a bank), or it is already on a deposit. Open the payment to see its Deposit To.
The bank account's balance looks too low, and Undeposited Funds too high. Payments have been received but never deposited. Make the deposits, dated the day each one actually reached the bank.
Old card payments are not offered for depositing after setting up Undeposited Funds. That is deliberate: setup starts from today, because payments before then already went to the bank.