Write off bad debt in QuickBooksLast updated on 03/24/2023
You may encounter customers that are unable to pay the remaining balance they owe your company. If this occurs, you should write off the outstanding Accounts Receivable (A/R) as a bad debt expense. Correctly recording bad debt will decrease your A/R and the income recorded for that transaction.
Things to know
Follow criteria for bad debt
You will first need to ensure this customer’s A/R is deemed bad debt. The criteria for bad debt is:
The A/R balance has been outstanding for the past 90 days.
The customer has gone into bankruptcy.
Set up ServiceTitan to record bad debt
Before you start recording bad debt, you will need to complete required setup both in QuickBooks and in ServiceTitan.
Create a bad debt General Ledger Account
To set up a General Ledger Account to expense bad debt:
Go to Settings .
In the side menu, go to Accounting > General Ledger Accounts > Add GL Account.
Create an Expense account that matches your QuickBooks account.
Note: We recommend naming this GL account “Write Off - Bad Debt”.
Click Save.
Create a bad debt Payment Type
To set up a Payment Type to use for recording bad debt:
Go to Settings .
In the side menu, go to Invoicing > Payment and Invoice Types > Add.
Create a Payment Type and select the above General Ledger Account from the Which account do you wish to export to: Account dropdown.
Note: We recommend naming this payment type “Write Off”.
Click Save.
Set up QuickBooks to record bad debt
Create an expense account for bad debt
To create an expense account to map your QuickBooks bad debt item to:
In QuickBooks, go to Lists > Chart of Accounts.
In the Chart of Accounts window, open Account > New. You can also use the short-cut CRTL+N.
From the Account Type dropdown, select Expense.
In the Add New Account window, fill in the required information.
Note: We recommend naming this account “Write Off - Bad Debt”.
Click Save & Close. Your bad debt account should now show in your Chart of Accounts.
In ServiceTitan, go to Settings .
In the side menu, go to Integrations > Quickbooks Desktop > Company File.
Click Edit next to Chart of Accounts Mapped and make sure the bad debt GL account in ServiceTitan is mapped to the one in QuickBooks.
Record bad debt using an expense payment type
Use search to find the invoice.
Click into the invoice.
On the left menu, click Collect and Apply Payment.
Select Writeoff from the Payment type dropdown and enter the remaining balance into the Amount Applied column.
Confirm the payment is applied to the correct invoice.
Click Save.
Batch and export the payment to QuickBooks.
Important note: Some features may not be currently included in your account and additional configuration may be required. Please contact technical support for details.
Disclaimer: Information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and it should not be construed to be legal advice. Information provided in this article may also not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. You should not act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information in this article to meet any compliance requirements without seeking independent legal or other professional advice.