How to record a transfer in QuickBooks

Pick the method that fits how the money moved. Intuit offers four. The Transfer form suits money you've moved but haven't yet imported from the bank. A cheque is for a transfer made with a paper cheque, and lets you keep its number. If your accounts are connected to online banking, you can categorise and match the transfer in your imported bank transactions. The fourth is a journal entry, which Intuit says to check with your accountant about first, so this page covers the other three.

Whichever you use, the goal is one transaction that touches both accounts, which Intuit says keeps your books in good shape. Have the date, the amount, the account the money came out of and the account it went into. For a cheque, have the cheque number too.

For the bank feed route, wait until the transactions from both accounts have downloaded. You start from the account the money left.

1. Select + New (or + Create).
2. Select Transfer.
3. In the Transfer Funds From dropdown, choose the bank account the money came out of.
4. In the Transfer Funds To dropdown, choose the bank account it went into.
5. Type the amount in the Transfer Amount field.
6. Change the Date to the day the transfer happened.
7. Add a description in the Memo field if you want one. It's optional.
8. Select Save and close, or Save and new if you have another transfer to enter.

If the transfer is already among your downloaded transactions, go to All apps, select Accounting, then select Bank transactions. Choose the bank account the funds came from and open the Pending tab. Find the transaction and select it, choose Transfer from the Transaction type dropdown, fill in the other required fields and select Post.

A transfer saved on the form appears in the history of both accounts. To confirm it, open each account's history from the chart of accounts. A cheque records the same move, out of the bank account you chose and into the account in its Category column.

With the bank feed route, the transfer also needs matching. Intuit's matching steps find bank transfers by amount and date: on Bank transactions, look in the Categorise or Match column for the suggested match, then select the transaction or the sparkle icon to open its row. Pick the account from the Category dropdown (+ Add new account is there if the account doesn't exist yet), check the match is right and select Post.

A posted transfer isn't final. From Transactions, open the Posted tab, choose the account and select the undo icon in the Undo column, and the transaction returns to the Pending tab for you to fix. On the other version of the banking page, the route is Bank transactions, the Posted tab and Undo in the Action column. Intuit suggests finishing changes like these before your monthly reconciliation.

No match suggestion for the transfer? Intuit lists the usual reasons: the amounts differ because of fees or discounts, the record is dated too far before or after the bank transaction, or the record has already been reconciled. A reconciled record can't be matched, and Intuit's advice in that case is to exclude the downloaded transaction.

If the suggestion QuickBooks offers is the wrong record, select Find other match to look for the right one. On the version of the page with the Match/Categorise column, that option is labelled Match.