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ACCOUNTS has various special purpose data entry windows, such as the ones for writing cheques or entering deposits.
However, you can also do virtually everything (except enter bills for later payment, and pay those bills) with just the one powerful register window. This has the advantage that it lets you see all transactions on that account, and the running account balance. Some examples follow.
For additional sample, please see the page Payroll Samples and Mortgage Fund and Transaction Samples.
Transferring Money between Accounts
Just enter the transaction on either account's register window. For instance, if you are transferring $100 from Chequing Account to Savings Account, open the register for the Chequing Account, enter an appropriate description like "Transfer from Chequing to Savings", enter the Payment amount of $100, and select Savings Account as the affected other Account.
If you save that and switch to the register window for the Savings Account, you will see that the transaction you just entered displays there too, only it shows up as a Deposit. (And of course, you could have entered it that way on this window in the first place, if you preferred!)
If this also affects fund balances, see Inter-Fund Transfers below.
Recording a Cheque
Just record this on the register window for the account you are writing it on. You can use the "+" key in the Number field to bring up the next cheque number for this account. And of course, the amount of the cheque is entered in the Payment field.
If there is sales tax on this payment, be sure to enter the appropriate Tax Code. (For details, see Maintaining Sales Tax Codes.)
If the cheque is for things in two or more different expense accounts, use the Splits window to split that out appropriately.
Recording a Deposit
Record this in the register window for the account you are making the deposit to. Enter the amount in the Deposit field.
If the deposit includes money for two or more different income accounts, use the Splits window to split that out appropriately.
Interest earned on an account would also be entered this way. (It's a deposit, but the bank made it, not you!)
Recording a Credit Card Payment
This is basically like recording a cheque, but you do it on the register window for that credit card, and there is no cheque number. You enter the amount in the "Charge" field. (Payments to pay off your balance are entered in the Payment field.)
Recording Inter-Fund Transfers
If you have multiple funds (equity accounts) you may occasionally decide to transfer money from one to another (say, from the General Fund to a Building Fund). This is basically the same as the example above, transferring between bank accounts.
You could record this on the fund account that you are transferring from as a Decrease. If you switch to the register for the fund you are transferring to, it will show up as an Increase.
If however, your inter-fund transfer also involves moving money between two accounts, such as bank accounts, it gets a bit trickier. That is because only transactions affecting income or expense accounts implicitly change fund balances - asset and liability accounts are not directly connected in any way to fund accounts. So, both halves of the transaction need to be done - moving money between the asset accounts, and moving it between the fund accounts.
There are two ways you can do that. The first is to do two separate register transactions, as described in this section and the section Transferring Money Between Accounts above. One will do the transfer between the asset accounts, and the other will do the transfer between the funds. An arguably better option, since it keeps everything together, is to do it as a Journal Entry affecting all four accounts at once. (Register transactions are not allowed to affect both fund accounts and non-fund accounts in one transaction, to avoid common errors, since this is a very uncommon activity for most organizations.)
Correcting Income or Expense Amounts
Suppose you have recorded a payment or deposit, and realize that you allocated it to the wrong income or expense account.
The most obvious option is to just find that transaction and correct it. This is OK, because it will show up on your audit trail.
However, if you prefer not to do that, and would rather enter a separate transaction to correct the amounts, this is one example that you cannot do with the register windows. That is because register windows are only for Asset, Liability and Fund accounts, and the transaction you need to enter does not affect any of them.
Instead, you would enter that correcting transaction on a journal entry window.
As an example, suppose you allocated an $100 expense to Office Expenses, but it should have been Office Rent. Your journal entry would have a Credit of $100 to Office Expenses, and a Debit of $100 to Office Rent.
If it was for a deposit, and you allocated $100 to General Donations that should have been for Building Fund Donations, the correction would be the opposite - Debit $100 from General Donations, and Credit $100 to Building Fund Donations.
Voiding a Cheque
If you have already entered a cheque into the register, and need to void it, just find it and change the Payment amount to 0.00. If you wish, you could change the Payee/Description to "Void".
If you never recorded the cheque before, just enter it normally into the register, with the Payment amount of 0.00. You can select any normally used expense account for the Account. (While it is not actually relevant to any expense account, the program will not save a register transaction without an account, so you do have to select one.) Because the amount is zero, that will not affect any financial statements such as the Income Statement.
Another option for voiding a previously entered cheque is to instead enter a reversing transaction. This might be preferable if you learn that the cheque needs to be voided sometime after it was written, when you have already printed (say) monthly financial statements for that period, and don't want to have to change them. The reversing transaction could be entered as at the date you learned it needed to be reversed, not the original cheque date. If you do this, you might want to change or add to the Memo on the original cheque transaction to say something like "Reversed on date", and have a Memo on the new reversing transaction such as "Reversing cheque #... from date".
When you void a cheque, it will of course never clear your bank. You should therefore mark it as cleared when you do your next bank reconciliation, so that it does not stay on the "uncleared" list. If you use the technique in the previous paragraph, of entering a reversing entry, possibly with a different date, you will want to mark both the original cheque and the reversing entry as cleared on the next bank reconciliation.