Fix Messy QuickBooks Books Checks the bank never saw
A check on the books and cash that never left are two facts. Both have to be faced.
Age is the whole point
A check written last week can wait. A check written in March that the bank has never shown is a decision, not a balance you carry forever. We list them by age so the old ones cannot hide among the new ones.
The choices are ordinary. Void it if it should not have been written. Reissue it if the person is still owed. Find it if it cleared under a description nobody recognized. Each old check keeps its own decision in the register, void, reissue, or found.
An uncashed March check is an early item that has been waiting all season. We date it while the day is still quiet, before the new deposits bury it. Age is what makes that old check visible on the list.
What we do not do with the old ones
We do not drop every outstanding check into one bucket and reconcile around it. That makes the bank screen look calm and leaves the cash wrong. The calm is borrowed.
We do not net a spring check against a summer deposit and call them a match. They are different days. The statement date only works if each day keeps its own lines.
If the check was recorded and the cash never left, the books have to stop pretending the cash is gone. The correction is visible. It is not a quiet edit in a corner account.
Parking a line you cannot name is a different page. Read the balance still parked if that is the shape you are seeing.
After the ages are written
The month can end only when the old checks have a decision. A list of ages with no decision is still an open month.
An old check the owner is sure was cashed still gets a look at the statement. Remembering that you handed it over is not the same as the bank showing the cash gone. An age with no decision still leaves the cash on the books, and the month stays open until that decision is written beside the date.
Bring the check register or the screen that shows what is still outstanding. We start with the oldest date on that list.
Name the oldest date you can see, even if you do not know the payee.
Which check is old
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.