Receipting Checklist
Clean receipting — recording incoming payments accurately and promptly — is the foundation of everything downstream in AR. This checklist makes sure every receipt is captured, allocated and banked correctly.
What this checklist covers
- Capture every receipt across all payment channels
- Record accurate dates, amounts and methods
- Allocate receipts to the correct invoice promptly
- Bank and reconcile receipts without leakage
- Maintain a clear receipting trail
6 min
Before you start
Receipting is a daily discipline, not a month-end task. Make sure you can see every channel money arrives through so nothing is missed.
- List every payment channel — bank transfer, card, gateway, direct debit, cash, cheque.
- Confirm you can access each channel's report or feed.
- Agree how soon receipts must be recorded — same day is the gold standard.
- Have the open aged trial balance handy for allocation.
Step 1 — Capture every receipt
- Pull receipts from each channel for the day or period and record them.
- Capture the correct date, amount, payer and method for each.
- Reconcile channel totals so no receipt is dropped between systems.
- Flag any receipt that arrives without enough detail to allocate.
Step 2 — Allocate and bank
- Allocate each receipt to the correct open invoice using its reference or remittance.
- Split part-payments and batch payments across the right invoices.
- Hold genuinely unidentified receipts on a tracked holding account.
- Confirm banked totals agree to receipts recorded.
Step 3 — Reconcile and keep the trail
- Reconcile receipts recorded to cash banked, daily where volume allows.
- Keep the remittance or reference behind each allocation.
- Review unidentified receipts regularly until cleared.
- Hand a clean, current receipting position into month-end.
Consistent receipting keeps your aged report accurate, which makes chasing precise. The getting-paid-faster guide shows how clean receipting supports faster collection, and our free tools help standardise references.
Common mistakes
- Batching receipting to month-end. Context is lost and the aged report is wrong all month.
- Wrong dates. A receipt dated to the wrong period distorts cut-off and reporting.
- No reference discipline. Receipts without references become tomorrow's unallocated cash.
- Banked-not-recorded gaps. If banked and recorded totals never agree, reconciliation will always break.
Key takeaways
- Capture receipts from every channel, ideally the same day
- Record accurate date, amount, payer and method for each receipt
- Allocate promptly and hold unidentified cash on a tracked account
- Reconcile receipts recorded to cash banked frequently
Frequently asked questions
How quickly should receipts be recorded?
As close to receipt as practical — same day for most businesses. The longer a receipt goes unrecorded, the more context is lost, the more likely it becomes unallocated cash, and the less accurate your aged report is for chasing. Daily receipting also makes reconciliation far easier.
What is the difference between receipting and cash application?
Receipting is capturing and recording that money has come in; cash application is matching that money to the specific invoices it pays. They are closely linked, and clean receipting — with accurate detail and references — makes accurate cash application far easier.
What should I do with a receipt I cannot identify?
Record it so it is not lost, but hold it on a clearly labelled holding or suspense account rather than guessing an allocation. Keep investigating using the bank reference and likely customers, and review the holding account regularly so unidentified receipts do not pile up.
Work the checklist, then get paid
Use the free Invoice Generator, then let Merion recover anything that goes unpaid — commission-only.