You looked at your check register and saw the same transaction show up twice.
Same date, same amount, same vendor. And now you’re sitting there wondering… did I actually pay this twice? 🤔
Most likely, no.
But before you go in and delete anything, I want to show you why the duplicate is there in the first place.
Because once you understand the why, you can stop it from happening again instead of cleaning up the same mess every month.
Here’s what’s really going on.
When you look in your register, a transaction with a little “C” next to it came in and cleared through your bank feed.
A transaction without the “C” was entered manually, either as an expense or straight into the register.
When you have one of each for the same purchase, that’s your duplicate. Two entries in QuickBooks for one thing that happened in real life.
And that quietly causes real problems. Your profit and loss shows expenses you didn’t actually have twice.
Your bank balance stops matching. And tax time gets harder than it needs to be, because now you’re second-guessing numbers you should be able to trust.
So how do you clean it up the right way?
First, decide what you want to keep.
You can remove the transaction that came from the bank feed and match it to the one you entered, or you can keep the bank feed transaction and delete your manual one.
There’s no single right answer here.
What matters is that you pick one way and stay consistent, because bouncing back and forth is exactly how these duplicates start.
A quick note on deleting versus voiding.
If it’s your own set of books, deleting is fine, and it still shows in your audit trail.
If you’re working in someone else’s books, void it instead and leave a note in the memo about why you removed it. That little bit of history saves you a headache later.
The goal, every single time you look at your register, is simple:
One transaction in QuickBooks for the one transaction that happened in real life.
When you match instead of re-enter, QuickBooks connects the bank feed to what’s already there, and the duplicate disappears from your feed.
When something truly can’t match, that’s when you use exclude, which just tells QuickBooks you’ve already got it handled.
And here’s the part people skip:
Your bank feed isn’t perfect.
Sometimes it doubles a transaction, sometimes it misses one entirely.
That’s exactly why reconciling still matters, even when you’re using bank feeds.
Reconciling is how you catch the duplicates you didn’t even know were there.
Because usually when you find one, there are a few more hiding.
One important note.
Everything here is for the current year, before you’ve filed taxes.
If the transaction you found lives in a year you’ve already filed, do not fix it this way; deleting or changing it will alter the reports behind a return you already filed.
Here’s the safe way to handle those old ones instead: Don’t Delete Old Transactions in QuickBooks (Do This Instead)
______________________
If your bank feeds have been creating more mess than they clean up, this is exactly what I walk you through inside Mastering Bank Feeds.
You’ll learn how to set them up correctly, what’s happening behind the scenes, and how to stop duplicates before they ever hit your register.
You can grab it here: https://canduskampfer.com/feeds
Want a QuickBooks tip in your inbox every week?
Join my email list for a new tip every week at CandusKampfer.com
Come say hi on Instagram, find me on Facebook, and subscribe on YouTube so you never miss a tutorial. 💡
Now I would love to hear from you: what’s the one thing you want cleaned up in your QuickBooks?
Tell me in the comments. ⤵️
#CandusKampfer
