# How to add a receipt for an unknown customer deposit

KB66

Sometimes you receive money from Customers in your bank account and do not know which customer it is, but you still need to do an Account reconciliation. There are several ways to handle this, but our recommended method is to receipt the money into an Unknown receipts liability account.

If you don’t have such an account, create one in an appropriate place in your General ledger. It can either be a liability account which has a positive value or (gasp!) an asset account that will have a negative value. Until you identify the debtor, you owe this money to someone – in fact, it may have been an inadvertent deposit so you cannot classify it as income.

1. Create a Receipt
2. Set the receipt Type as Manual
3. Set the Allocation account as your Unknown receipts account
4. Fill in all other information a for a normal receipt
5. Be sure to add into the Memo any bank statement reference that appeared so that you have this information handy

Your unknown receipts account will now have a value in it equal to the receipt.

So, what happens when you finally identify the customer?

When you identify who owed you this money, you have two options. You cannot change the receipt type once it has been processed, so you can either:

1. Delete the original receipt and re-enter as a correct customer receipt
   - Be aware that this will un-reconcile the transaction and be allocated a new Receipt #. In most cases, this is not an issue
2. Create a NEW receipt for the customer
   - Confirm that you have the original receipt for the unknown amount and reference this receipt # in the memo
   - Fill in all information as you would for a normal customer receipt but:
     1. Make the Receipt into account your Unknown receipts account
     2. This will reduce the balance of this account

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