Question

QB Online Out-Of-Balance

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
August 20, 2025
2 replies
11 views

This is for QB Online - the balance sheet shows a Liab & Equity amount that is $2000 greater than the asset amount. I checked balance sheets going back to 2016 and found that the 2017 P&L has $2000 in "Unapplied Cash Payment Income" that was not there when I prepared the tax return in 2017. I compared a balance sheet for 2024 that I printed on 12/05/2024 to one printed today, both cash basis. The one from last Dec is in balance and the Retained Earnings account matches the tax trial balance for 2023.

Technical support suggested that I make a $2000 entry in 2017 to offset the income that has appeared, but I cannot see how that will help. The entry will be in balance, and the out-of-balance condition will persist. The only solution I can arrive at is to either have the file verified and rebuilt, or to force an out-of-balance entry to offset the error. Unless I am mistaken, neither is an option in QBO.

I am open to any suggestions.

QuickBooks Online

Rainflurry

Level 11

@pirizarry

Does the balance sheet (BS) balance on accrual basis? Does the $2,000 Unapplied Cash Payment Income go away in 2018? If so, sometime in 2017, a payment was received and somehow the date was changed to a date before the invoice it was applied to. Try changing the date of the $2,000 payment to 20 years in the future and save it. Then, change it back to a date in 2017 after the date of the invoice it was applied to. See if that fixes it. You may need to mark the payment as reconciled in your register after changing the date back to 2017, so your reconciled bank balance stays accurate.

P

pirizarryAuthor

Thank you for the reply.

(1) The BS does balance on the accrual basis

(2) The $2000 Unapplied Cash Payment Income becomes a part of Retained Earnings and rolls forward from 2017 as an increase in RE that is now $2k greater than the balance that was on the trial balances that were prepared for each of those years

(3) The payment was for more than $2K, but the unapplied amount from the payment is $2k. The original documentation of the payment is no longer available, so I don't know all of the invoices it was originally applied to.

To recap: Total assets at each year-end from 2017 until 2023, on the cash basis, agrees to the trial balance that was used to prepare the tax returns for those years. Total liabilities & equity for those years is now overstated by $2000, as is Retained Earnings for each of those years. The cash basis balance sheet does not balance, but the accrual one does.

I am reluctant to edit the 2017 payment, which currently shows only its original entry in the audit trail. But if nothing else comes through, I might try it.