Overview
If your business pays vendors, contractors, landlords, or anyone else by paper check, there is always a gap between when you write the check and when it clears your bank. This guide explains how Puzzle handles that gap and gives you three ways to track written-but-uncleared checks, depending on how much visibility you need.
How Puzzle handles checks
Puzzle is built around your live bank feed. Cash is recognized when money actually moves in your connected account, meaning when the check clears, not when it is written. Because of this, your cash balance in Puzzle stays tied to your actual bank activity, and there is no separate "write check" entry that posts at issuance.
Traditional accounting systems (QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite) work the other way: the check hits the ledger the moment you write it, book cash drops immediately, and the uncleared check sits as an outstanding item you tick off during bank reconciliation. In Puzzle, book cash generally equals your settled bank feed, so by default there is no outstanding check to reconcile. If you want the expense or obligation on your books before the check clears, you record it deliberately using one of the options below.
Option 1: Let the check land when it clears
The simplest approach. When the check clears your bank, it appears in your Transaction feed like any other bank transaction, and you categorize it at that point.
Best for: occasional, smaller checks, or businesses on a pure cash basis.
Trade-off: the expense is not recognized until the check clears. A check written March 30 that clears April 3 lands in April, and your available cash can look higher than what you have actually committed.
Option 2: Enter a Bill, then match the payment (recommended for vendor checks)
If the check pays a vendor, use Puzzle's accounts payable workflow:
Enter a Bill when you incur the obligation. This records the expense and accounts payable right away. See Bills in Puzzle.
Write and send the check as you normally would.
When the check clears, it appears in your Transaction feed. Open the transaction and apply it to the bill. See How to Apply a Vendor Payment to a Bill.
This is the cleanest supported workflow and fixes the expense timing problem: the expense is recognized when incurred, not when the check clears. Between writing and clearing, the obligation shows in accounts payable as unpaid, which is usually a fine proxy for "issued but uncleared."
Best for: vendor payments, and anyone who wants accurate expense timing without extra journal entries.
Option 3: Track float with an Outstanding Checks clearing account
If you write physical checks regularly and want explicit visibility into the amount that is issued but not yet cleared, use a dedicated clearing account with manual journal entries:
Create a liability account called "Outstanding Checks" in your chart of accounts.
When you write a check, post a manual journal entry:
Debit: Expense (or Accounts Payable)
Credit: Outstanding ChecksWhen the check clears, categorize the bank transaction in your Transaction feed to the Outstanding Checks account. This zeroes out the entry (Debit: Outstanding Checks, Credit: Cash).
The net effect is the same as any check payment (expense recognized, cash reduced), and the Outstanding Checks balance shows you exactly what is issued but not cleared at any time.
One important note: use a liability account, not a contra account inside cash. If you reduce the cash account itself at write time, your Puzzle cash will no longer match your bank feed, which breaks the reconciliation model Puzzle depends on. Keeping the uncleared amount in a separate liability preserves reconciliation integrity.
Best for: businesses that write checks regularly and want to track the uncleared float explicitly.
Which option should I use?
Vendor checks: Option 2 (Bill + payment match).
Frequent check writers who want float visibility: Option 3 (Outstanding Checks clearing account).
Occasional or immaterial checks, cash-basis books: Option 1 (let it land when it clears).
Coming from QuickBooks Online?
The mental translation: what QBO's "Write Check" tracks automatically as an outstanding-check reconciling item, Puzzle expects you to either let resolve naturally through the bank feed (Option 1), or model deliberately through a Bill (Option 2) or a clearing account (Option 3). This is because Puzzle's ledger is anchored to settled bank activity rather than check issuance, which is also why your Puzzle cash balance matches your bank without a monthly outstanding-checks cleanup.
Still Puzzled?
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