All Forum Posts by: Brett Sayers

You don’t create a liability by transferring money from a bank account into a liability account.  That will result in a pay down effect and reduce the liability balance as you are experiencing.  

The money you are depositing into your bank account as a security deposit should be created “from” the liability hence the debit (deposit) to the bank account/or undeposited funds and the credit (increase) to the liability account.  

B-Rad. . . You really opened up a barrier I was holding in my mind with this one. Thanks so much. While I'm not 100% on everything, I think I have a grasp on what I can do. I've got the bank account set up as a bank and the SD from the tenant that dropped into the checking coming from the Liability account for that house leaving a balance in the liability. The transfer from checking to the savings account was no issue then. I also set up a sub account for each house like you suggested and it really cleaned up the whole thing. 

I will probably reach out to you again when it comes to class tracking and returning the SD, or portion there of, to the tenant. I assume it is basically the same process in reverse where the transfer to checking just has a memo on it and the actual check going out would be paying to that Liability account.

Thanks again. . . A real lightbulb moment there. 

As someone who made her living for many years from fixing the messes people made trying to self set up quickbooks, I suggest hiring a pro to do this for you and then to train you how to use it.  However, there are many people that say they know how to use QB but they will only make it a bigger mess.  Your best option is to call your CPA and ask for a referral to someone to help you. 

The straight up talk answer is that the longer you wait the more it will cost you to get it all untangled :) 

I gotcha and I am going to be sitting down with the CPA here in a week or so to make sure everything is set up properly, detangle the oddballs, and ensure I am tracking it correctly. The goal in figuring it out now and gathering as much data / working out minor issues is to make the most effective time spent with the CPA at $$$/hr. I don't want to walk in there and look like a bozo saying "show me where to click". It's more about being able to speak intelligently in the room with them and being able to understand some basic concepts. I'm trying to take Algebra I before sitting in on a college TRIG class basically. Thanks for the reply. The words are wise for sure.