Wedding Event Planner QuickBooks CleanupA deposit is not the fee yet

A planner file can look finished and still be unable to answer a simple question. What did the June date earn? If every wedding sits on one customer, the deposit, the florist, the band, and the fee all share that name. The profit and loss still runs. The bank still ties. The report cannot separate one date from the next, so a refund on one wedding changes the look of the others.

Create a customer for the date before a dollar is recoded. The display name can carry the couple and the day. Bills for that day are entered on that customer. When the fee is earned, the income item uses the same customer. A report by customer is then the event, and the side spreadsheet can go.

Jobs and sub customers follow the same rule when the file already uses them. The job is the date, not a single job called weddings. A payment that arrives before the name exists can wait in undeposited funds, or on a holding item, until the customer is real. Parking it on the old shared customer, just to clear the bank feed, is how the shared row lives another month.

New names start in the year that is still open. A year already filed is identified first and then left as filed. New bills land on the new customers. The next close is the first one a person can read by event. On a call we ask which dates still share a row. One screen of the customer list shows the shape. After the names exist, the rest is ordinary entry.

Related reading sits on ten events, one customer and on where a hold posts.

Couples often pay before the date. The contract, not a habit in the file, says whether they can have that money back. If they can, the amount is still theirs. Posting it as the fee makes income look stronger than the contract allows, and a later refund then looks like a loss instead of a return of their own money.

Read the clause that covers cancellation, the date, and what is kept if the couple steps away. When the clause says the money comes back, point the item at a hold. When the clause says the money is kept, or when the date has arrived and the work is done, that is when the fee is earned. The same dollar is not both, on the same day, just because it cleared the bank.

Two planners can sign different clauses. One contract returns the hold up to a named week. Another keeps a portion and returns the rest. The file should follow the clause in front of you, one event at a time. A blanket rule that every advance is a liability, or that every advance is income, will be wrong for half the dates on the calendar.

Vendor bills are a different list. The couple's hold is not a florist payment, and it should not ride on the vendor report that later feeds the January forms. Keep the hold with the couple's customer. Keep the florist with the florist. The fee, once earned, is a third line. Mixing the three is how a clean bank rec still produces a confused year.

We will not move a hold inside a year that is already filed in order to make the open year look neater. The contract and the open months are enough for the next close. The longer note on vendors is the section under this one.

A band, a florist, a rental company, and a coordinator can each be paid many times across a season. If those payments never land on one vendor, January arrives with a pile of checks and no total. The total has to exist before the form does. Start it when the first bill is entered, and keep couple deposits off that list. Their money is not a vendor payment.

For payments made in 2026, services on Form 1099-NEC and rents on Form 1099-MISC are reported when they cross $2,000. Earlier years used a line of $600. Collect the W-9 before the first check goes out, rather than in the week the forms are due. Backup withholding can start whenever a taxpayer identification number is missing. It is not reserved for amounts above the reporting line.

Form 1099-NEC has to be filed by January 31. The recipient's copy of Form 1099-MISC shares that day. The IRS copy of the MISC is February 28 when you paper-file and March 31 when you file electronically. When one of those dates falls on a Saturday, a Sunday, or a holiday, the filing day is the next day the agency is open. This page does not substitute a made-up calendar. Rent paid to a real estate agent or a property manager may sit outside the planner's form. Check that exception against the payee before the rent joins the stack.

When a bill is part service and part materials, the materials often stay with the service on the same NEC. Peeling the flowers off the design fee, only for the form, can understate the amount the instructions expect. A payment the couple made by card, or through a processor, often shows up on a 1099-K from that processor. Do not also assume a second form from the planner for those same dollars. Check the instructions for the year you are filing.

Goods and coordination should already be split in the items, for a different reason. The shop's own state may tax the goods and not the coordination. A single item called wedding hides that split from both the sales tax return and the vendor total. The customer page walks the item split without repeating this form calendar.

The urge, once a shared customer is obvious, is to reopen last year and sort it. Resist that until someone has said the year out loud and confirmed the return is filed. A filed year is not a scratch file. Moving a deposit, a bill, or a fee inside it changes a number someone already signed. If a real error exists, it is handled as an amendment conversation, with the return in view, not as a cleanup shortcut on a Tuesday.

Name the filed year at the start of the work. Write it on the engagement notes. New customers, new holds, and new vendor totals begin in the open year. Comparative reports can still show the filed year. They show it as filed. They do not invite edits.

A room charge is a common place this goes wrong in an open year, and it should still not be "fixed" backward into a filed one. Hotels often collect a room tax and remit it themselves. If that amount was typed into sales tax payable, the planner looks as if the tax is theirs to send. Move the memo off the payable in the open period. Leave the filed period until an amendment is actually the decision.

The same pause covers payroll. If a coordinator is on the books as a vendor and should be paid as an employee, the switch starts in the open months. The provider is one you operate after we stand it up. Last year's payroll filings are not rerun from this practice just to shorten a vendor list. The filed months remain the record they already are.

Bring the list of dates, the contract clause on the hold, and the year you already filed. That is the whole packet for a first call. The form on this page takes those three. The calendar is on pick a time.