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Manually entering credit card transactions provides you with the most accurate and up-to-date financials in QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Pro. While bank feeds allow your credit cards to sync to QuickBooks Online, making transactions instantly viewable in the register, there’s a time lag between the actual credit card transaction and when the transaction shows as pending before it posts to your credit card statement.
Pending payments will not transfer via bank feed. Only an actual payment that has been processed via your credit card and appears on your statement will transfer to your bank feeds.
Given the time lag while a transaction moves from pending to complete, consider manually entering your credit card expenses, especially at the end of your accounting period if you are using the accrual method of accounting.
Business owners and accountants may want to manually enter credit card transactions into QuickBooks Online if the following is true:
Credit card charges can show as pending for up to five days.
The quickest way to enter credit card charges into QuickBooks Online is to manually key in the transaction and match those transactions to your bank feed once the bank feed transactions appear on your register.
Some accountants and bookkeepers are used to manually entering transactions from receipts, then reconciling the receipts to the credit card statement. Bank feeds speed up the reconciliation process and make it more efficient.
Entering credit card charges into QuickBooks Online is a quick and easy process. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to manually enter credit card charges in QuickBooks Online.
This method is used most often, due to the simplicity and efficiency of matching and reconciling.
Complete the following process:
8. What tax category fits? QuickBooks Online provides a dropdown of suggested categories. If none of the tax categories describe your transaction, select “+Add new.”
If you reconcile with bank feeds, the date of the transaction may lag a day or two from your manual entry. It can take one to five days for your credit card to fully process a transaction.
If you are used to uploading receipts to your computer (or phone) and want to post and match them that way, there is an alternative to Option 1. Complete the following steps:
Once you discover bank feeds, reconciling becomes nearly seamless, and you’ll spend much less time manually entering transactions.
Make sure your credit card is synced with QuickBooks Online so you can easily import transactions to your register.
Once your bank feeds are updated and you have entered transactions from Option 1, match your bank feeds with your entered transactions. Make sure you don’t add any transactions that have already been manually entered into the system.
Directly entering credit card charges into your register is the third option. Choose this option if you do not use bank feeds or upload receipts from your computer or phone.
If you have a very small number of credit card transactions, this may be the best method for you. Or if you have a credit card that you no longer use that is no longer synced to your bank feeds, but you still need a record of transactions, this is a good method.
The following steps outline how to enter your transactions into the credit card register.
After you have completed the pop-up window, QuickBooks takes you to the Chart of Accounts.
Once you have entered in one or all of your credit card transactions, you’ll see a Reconcileoption on the top right of the page. Performing a reconciliation ensures your entries match.
If you have the desktop version of QuickBooks Pro, you will manually enter credit card transactions differently. QuickBooks Pro looks different from QuickBooks Online, but the process is somewhat similar. Before manually entering your credit card charges, ensure you have your credit card included within your chart of accounts.
Interested in an alternative to QuickBooks Pro? Consider our review of Clover, our Merchant One review instead.
To enter your credit card transactions into QuickBooks Pro, click on “Banking,” then”Credit Card Charges.”Before Step 2, ensure”Purchase/Charge”has been selected (QuickBooks Pro should populate this for you). Then, fill out the following:
Whether you’re a QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Pro user, entering credit card charges on time and ensuring transactions are accurate, up to date, and available for accounting purposes is crucial to your business’s recordkeeping. If QuickBooks isn’t for you, read all our reviews of the best accounting software.