Cheque management is where you track the cheques you have received through their life: a cheque you took in sits in hand until you deposit it into a bank account, and if it bounces you mark it returned. It is the home of every cheque that came in on a Customer Receipt or a Bank Receipt using a cheque payment method. The cashier, the bookkeeper, or the accountant works these cheques as they clear the bank.
The screen is called Manage Cheques. It tracks received cheques only, the ones customers hand you. Cheques you write yourself, on a supplier or bank payment, are not followed here; their number and date are recorded on the payment for your reference, but there is nothing to deposit.
When you save a receipt with a cheque payment method, ZyncLedger records the money to your Cheque in Hand account, an asset that holds cheques you hold but have not yet banked. That receipt then appears here as a pending cheque, ready to deposit.
Before you start
Finding the Manage Cheques screen
Manage Cheques opens from the Manage Cheques button on the Customer Receipt or Bank Receipt list (the button also appears inside the customer receipt and supplier payment forms). The button shows only if you have permission to list customer receipts or bank receipts, so you need at least one of List Customer Receipts or List Bank Receipts, granted per user under Permissions. See Users, seats & permissions.
- A cheque appears here only if it was taken in on a receipt using a cheque payment method, which is what routes the money to the Cheque in Hand account. Enter the Customer Receipt or Bank Receipt first.
- The bank account you deposit into must exist in your Chart of Accounts with an account type of Bank. The Cheque in Hand account itself cannot be a deposit destination.
The Manage Cheques screen
Manage Cheques opens full screen with two panels side by side:
- Pending Cheques (Undeposited) on the left lists cheques in hand that you have not yet banked. Each row shows the Source (Customer Receipt or Bank Receipt), the Date, Receipt #, Customer / Name, Cheque No., Cheque Date, and Amount.
- Deposited Cheques on the right lists cheques you have banked, with the same columns plus the Deposit Bank they went into and per-row actions.
Along the top, summary tiles total the cheques by state: Pending, Realized, Unrealized, Returned, and Unreturned. Use the Cheque no. search box above each panel, or the Banks and Branches filters, to find a cheque. The checkboxes above the Deposited Cheques panel (Realized, Unrealized, Returned, Unreturned) control which deposited cheques the panel shows.
Deposit a cheque
Depositing banks a cheque you hold: it moves the money out of Cheque in Hand and into the bank account you choose.
Open Manage Cheques
On the Customer Receipt or Bank Receipt list, select Manage Cheques. The pending cheques load in the left panel.
Select the cheques to deposit
In Pending Cheques (Undeposited), tick the checkbox on each cheque you are banking. Tick the header checkbox to select every listed cheque at once. You can deposit several cheques in one go, even into the same bank account.
Set the deposit date and bank account
In the footer, fill in the two fields the deposit needs:
Field What it does Deposit date (required) The date the deposit posts to the ledger. It defaults to today. Deposit to bank (required) The bank account the cheque is paid into. The list offers accounts of type Bank; the Cheque in Hand account is excluded. Deposit
Select Deposit, which shows how many cheques you have selected. ZyncLedger banks each selected cheque to the chosen account on the deposit date and moves it from the Pending panel to the Deposited panel.
Mark it realized when it clears (optional)
Once the bank confirms a deposited cheque has cleared, you can record that: select the cheque in the Deposited panel and select Mark Realized (or use the tick action on its row), then enter the Realized date. Marking a cheque realized changes no balances. It is a status only, so you can tell at a glance which deposited cheques have actually cleared and which are still in transit.
To undo a deposit, revert it
If you banked a cheque by mistake, select it in the Deposited panel and choose Revert deposit. The deposit is undone and the cheque returns to Pending, back in hand as if it had never been banked. You can revert a deposit only while the cheque has not been returned, and only while the deposit's bank line has not been reconciled (see the reconciliation note below).
Mark a cheque returned
If a deposited cheque bounces, mark it returned. What that does depends on the reason you pick: some reasons let you bank the cheque again, others write it off for good.
Select the returned cheque
In the Deposited Cheques panel, tick the cheque that bounced, then select Mark Returned (or use the return action on its row).
Enter the return date and reason
In the Mark cheque as returned dialog, set the Return date, then choose a Reason. The reason decides whether the cheque can be banked again:
- Re-depositable reasons (for example Insufficient funds, Refer to drawer, Post-dated) return the cheque to Pending so you can deposit it again later. The deposit is reversed, putting the money back into Cheque in Hand.
- Final reasons (for example Payment stopped, Stale / expired, Account closed) write the cheque off. The dialog tells you which kind a reason is as you pick it.
Confirm
Select Mark returned. A re-depositable cheque reappears in the Pending panel; a final one stays in the Deposited panel marked returned.
To undo a return, roll it back
Selected a final return in error? Pick the cheque and choose Rollback return to reverse it and put the cheque back to its deposited state.
What these do to your books
The money on a pending cheque is already in your books. It went in when you saved the receipt, which recorded the amount to your Cheque in Hand account. So these actions move that value around rather than record fresh income:
- Deposit moves the amount out of Cheque in Hand and into the bank account you deposit to. It records no new income or expense; it just recognises that the cheque is now with the bank. Because it puts a line on that bank account, a deposited cheque appears on that account's bank reconciliation, where you tick it off against your statement.
- Revert deposit and a re-depositable return both undo the deposit, taking the amount back out of the bank account and into Cheque in Hand.
- A final return of a customer's cheque re-bills the customer: the amount goes back onto their Accounts Receivable balance as an open item, dated from the return date, which reappears on their next Customer Receipt to collect again. It comes back out of the bank account.
- A final return of a bank receipt cheque writes the amount off to your Returned Cheques expense account and takes it back out of the bank. (If that bank receipt was a single receivable line tied to a customer, that customer is re-billed instead, exactly like a customer receipt.)
- Mark realized changes no balances at all. It only records whether a deposited cheque has cleared.
Tips & gotchas
A receipt locks once its cheque is deposited
Once you deposit a cheque, ZyncLedger will not let you edit or delete the Customer Receipt or Bank Receipt it came from. To correct such a receipt, first select its cheque here and choose Revert deposit, then edit the receipt.
Reconciled deposits cannot be reverted
If a deposit's bank line has already been matched on a bank reconciliation, you cannot revert the deposit or return the cheque until you undo that reconciliation first, so reconciled history stays intact.
Deposits and returns respect the ledger close date
Depositing, returning, and their reversals all post on a date you choose, so each is blocked if that date falls in a period closed by the Ledger close date. Use a date inside an open period.
Realized is a record, not a requirement
You do not have to mark a cheque realized for it to be banked. Realizing is an optional status that helps you separate deposited cheques that have cleared from those still in transit; the money is in the bank account from the deposit either way.
Related
- Customer Receipt is where a received cheque comes in, and where a bounced customer cheque reappears to collect again.
- Bank Receipt is the other way a cheque is taken in.
- Supplier Payment records cheques you write, which are not tracked here.
- Bank Reconciliation is where a deposited cheque clears against your bank statement.
- Payment methods set which methods are cheques and route them to Cheque in Hand.
- Chart of Accounts holds the Cheque in Hand, bank, and Returned Cheques accounts these actions post to.
