Creating custom business A/P check layout

[R. Victor Klassen]

>  This brings up another point and I do not recall reading about it in the
> help or guide manuals: what are 'splits' on A/P checks? My understanding of
> a split is having multiple off-setting accounts (e.g., expense or liability)
> to an asset acount (e.g., checking). If I'm paying a telephone company,
> accountant, or other vendor I might have multiple invoices to be paid on a
> single check (with each one listed on the stubs), but I've not before known
> those to be referred to as splits.

My first use for split on the stubs of cheques was for payroll.  Here it is the more conventional sort of thing, where the entries all do have different accounts, as the different forms of withholding and compensation correspond to various accounts.  Yes, the conventional use of “split” is where the balancing entries require more than one account.

However, I realized I could also use this to annotate that multiple invoice numbers were being paid.

If, for example, I’m paying three different invoices, I could create three different lines for them (as if they were for three accounts) but give them all the same account.
So one would be “Chequing account” and the other three would sum to that one and all be “Liabilities:Accounts Payable”.

Depending on how you have the custom cheque format set up, they can then appear on the cheque stub.

It is, however, a relatively manual process.   If I want to do that I do it by editing the transaction after it was created by “pay”ing it in the pay invoice dialogue.