How to Find Errors in QuickBooks Online (Without Guessing)

If something feels “off” in your QuickBooks Online file but you don’t know where to start, you’re not alone. Many bookkeeping issues don’t announce themselves clearly, they quietly sit in reports, throwing off your balances and making your financial data unreliable.

The good news is that you don’t need to audit every transaction to uncover problems. There are a few strategic reports that can quickly point you in the right direction.

In this guide, I’ll show you a fast, practical way to identify common errors in QuickBooks Online, especially unpaid bills and undeposited funds, so you know where to look next instead of guessing.

Start With Reports, Not Transactions

When something isn’t adding up, it’s tempting to dive straight into registers or click through individual transactions. That approach is time-consuming and often frustrating.

Instead, start with standard reports. Reports give you a high-level view and help surface red flags quickly.

From the left-hand menu in QuickBooks Online, go to Reports and open the Standard Reports section.

Step 1: Run the Unpaid Bills Report

One of the most useful reports for finding errors is the Unpaid Bills report.

This report shows:

• All bills that have been entered
• Which bills are still outstanding
• How long they’ve been overdue
  

When reviewing this report, pay close attention to very old bills.

What Old Unpaid Bills Might Mean

If you see bills from months ago, especially from vendors you know are typically paid on time, that’s a strong signal something may be wrong.

For example:

• A bill from January that’s still unpaid may indicate a duplicate entry
• A bill that was paid outside of QuickBooks but never marked as paid
• A vendor invoice that was entered twice
  

Old unpaid bills inflate your accounts payable balance and make it look like you owe more than you actually do.

Step 2: Look for Patterns, Not Just Numbers

When you notice unpaid bills, don’t immediately delete or edit them.

Instead, ask:

• Was this vendor actually paid?
• Was payment recorded somewhere else?
• Could this be a duplicate bill?
  

The goal at this stage is not to fix everything it’s to identify where the problem likely started.

Step 3: Investigate Undeposited Funds

Another common issue appears in Undeposited Funds.

If your balance sheet shows money sitting in undeposited funds, it usually means:

• Payments were recorded as received
• But never matched to a bank deposit
  

Rather than clicking into the balance sheet or scrolling through a register, reports make this much easier.

When reviewing undeposited funds, you’re looking for payments that:

• Were recorded as income
• But never made it into the bank account
• Even though the bank account itself is already reconciled
  

This mismatch often happens when:

• Deposits are recorded incorrectly
• Multiple payments were combined into one bank deposit but not grouped properly in QuickBooks
• Income was recorded without completing the deposit step

Step 4: Use Dates to Narrow Your Search

Once you identify suspicious transactions, look at what else happened around the same dates.

For example:

• Was there a bank deposit for the same amount?
• Was there a combined deposit that doesn’t match individual payments?
• Was income recorded but never cleared through undeposited funds?
  

Using dates helps you trace the issue without searching blindly.

Why This Method Works

This approach doesn’t try to find every possible error. Instead, it:

• Highlights the most common problem areas
• Narrows your focus
• Helps you decide what to investigate next
  

Unpaid bills and undeposited funds are two of the biggest sources of reporting issues in QuickBooks Online, and reviewing them regularly can prevent long-term problems.

Final Thoughts: Use Reports as Your Early Warning System

QuickBooks reports are more than summaries, they’re diagnostic tools.

If something doesn’t feel right in your file:

• Start with unpaid bills
• Review undeposited funds
• Look for transactions that don’t match what actually happened in the bank
  

This process won’t fix everything instantly, but it will put you on the right path, which is often the hardest part.

If you’d like help reviewing these reports or untangling what you find, it’s often faster (and less stressful) to ask before making changes that could create new issues later.

Helpful Resources

Compare Quickbooks Plans: https://www.mycloudbookkeeping.org/quickbooks-plan-comparison

Small Business Month-End Checklist: https://learn.mycloudbookkeeping.org/small-business-month-end-checklist

Book a Free Consultation: https://www.mycloudbookkeeping.org/consultation

So here we are in our sample company, and one thing that I would like to mention before we dive in is that what we’re going to do is look at some very quick ways to point out that there could be problems. It’s not going to find everything, but it’ll set you on the right path.

So I’m going to pop across here to Reports and Standard Reports.

The first thing we’re going to do is look for unpaid bills. So we have a report here called Unpaid Bills, and this will show us everything that’s in QuickBooks that has not been recorded as paid yet.

If we scroll down past due here, we can see that we have two really old bills. There’s one here for Cass from the 25th of January. We have another one from the 19th of November, which kind of makes me think perhaps this is a mistake, or maybe she sent us another bill if we hadn’t paid her for January.

Further down here we have another one for Kyle, which relates back to March of 2025.

So this is telling me that perhaps if we looked at our balance sheet right now, the total of undeposited funds would be $1,864.50. And this is a much easier way to find the breakdown than clicking through the number in the balance sheet or opening up the register, which has all of the ins and outs.

Where I would start here is by having a look to see if there was a deposit into the bank for $565 that was recorded as income and not applied to this undeposited fund.

Or maybe there was a total deposit for all three amounts, but I would be investigating what else had happened around these dates, because we clearly recorded that we received the money from Edwin Kerr and him Tasia, but we did not record it into the bank, which we know is reconciled.

So this is a fantastic way to look to see what’s hanging out in your undeposited funds and to find the place to go next.

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