I am posting a follow-up to a discussion from last year on X with peer small business CPAs that contributed to in my decision to move my business banking to Relay in defense of potential chargebacks. This story that follows is the first actual test of that system.
Two days ago client paid QBO invoice through Payments. The money deposited into my Relay “New Revenue” account on the next business day (yesterday). Then I transferred the money to another Relay operating account for that client that I used to pay an IRS user fee and other expenses. Then today, 2 days later, Intuit QuickBooks sent an email with subject line “bank transfer cancelled”.
Client was uncertain and asked how to confirm that payment was actually made or cancelled. My response to the client: “A head’s up that the words “settled” and “cancelled” and confirmed” in these auto-generated on-screen or email messages by IRS, Relay and Intuit do not necessarily mean what we presume that they mean. The only reliable way to know is to look at the actual transactions in your bank account over several days.”
Client responded that he can manually confirm that the funds left his bank account. In my QuickBooks Payments account recent transactions report shows “disputed”. This indicated to me that client did cancel the transaction, either intentionally or not, and maybe tried to pay it again after that.
But the point is that the entire mess of communications is more difficult than it needs to be. My own impression is that we should clarify our understanding of the terms being used here: “settled” “cleared”, “cancelled”, etc. do not necessarily mean what we think they mean. I have talked with Relay over my concern that “settled” report does not mean that the payment transaction actually happened.