Why should I wait for the payment to be received before pushing RFP Liability invoices to Quickbooks?
A Request for Payment is not an invoice!
Wait! What!?!?!?
The dictionary defines an invoice as “a list of goods sent or services provided, with a statement of the sum due for these; a bill.” An RFP does not define goods or services that the customer has purchased. Instead, it is a request for the customer to send us money, usually for a specific phase or portion of the job.
Unfortunately, however, QuickBooks doesn’t understand this process, so a Liability RFP looks like an invoice to QuickBooks. So when you push an RFP Liability request, QB does two things.
- It creates an invoice stating that your customer owes you money (which is kinda right).
- It dumps the money into your liability account, even though you haven’t yet received the cash (and that ain’t right)!
So, by waiting to push your payment request to QuickBooks until you have received the payment, you won’t be overstating A/R, and you won’t be dumping a deposit into your Customer Deposit Liability before you have cash in hand. iPoint has been designed to help with this process in that we won’t let you push the RFP Liability invoice into QB until you have cash in hand. Yes, there is a way for you to override that, but why would you want to? After all, we accountants want accurate details, right?
When an RFP Liability is pushed to QuickBooks, the date of the deposit into the Customer Deposit liability account will be the same date as the RFP invoice. So, we recommend changing the date of the RFP to the date the customer’s payment is received.