Post-Dated Cheques

In cheque-heavy markets every business has the drawer: received cheques waiting for their date, issued cheques that will hit the account eventually. Without system support, that drawer is a diary and a prayer. With PDC handling enabled, it's a register with a lifecycle and correct accounting at every step.

The lifecycle#

Pending → Deposited → Cleared, with Bounced and Cancelled as the exits. Each transition is recorded when it happens, and the ledger follows:

• A received PDC parks in the Cheques Receivable (PDC) asset head — visibly yours-but-not-money-yet. Only clearing moves it to the bank.
• An issued PDC parks in Cheques Payable (PDC) — a liability with a date on it, not a surprise in three weeks.
• A bounce reverses cleanly: the cheque returns to the party's balance, and the paper trail says exactly what happened.

The policy choice#

Does a received cheque reduce the customer's due at receipt (the default — the control-account method, treating an accepted cheque as settlement pending clearing) or only at clearing (the memo method — no ledger effect until the bank says so)? Your accountant chooses once, in Accounting Settings, and the lifecycle honors it.

Running the register#

• Record cheques the day they arrive or are issued — the register's value is being complete.
• Deposit on the cheque's date, mark deposits when made, mark clearings from the bank statement.
• The PDC balances are early-warning instruments: receivable PDCs aging past their dates mean deposits aren't happening; a payable PDC total larger than next week's expected balance is a cash-flow conversation now, not on the bounce date.