My Journal Entry Update Failed with a "Matched Transaction Delete Error"

Shogo Customer Care
Shogo Customer Care

If you've requested an UPDATE to a sales journal entry in Shogo and the entry shows a status of Update Failed in your Accounting Status Report, you may see the following error message:

Matched Transaction Delete Error: You can not delete this transaction because it is matched to a transaction that was downloaded into a different account.

This error comes from QuickBooks, not from Shogo. This article explains why it happens and how to resolve it.

Why this happens

When Shogo posts an UPDATE to a sales journal entry (for example, after a reload, a remapping change, or a regeneration), Shogo first deletes the original entry in QuickBooks and then re-posts the corrected one in its place.

QuickBooks will not allow a journal entry to be deleted if it has been matched to a bank-feed deposit. Once a JE is matched to a downloaded bank transaction, QuickBooks locks the entry from deletion to protect the bank reconciliation. As long as that match is in place, Shogo cannot complete the update and the posting will fail.

To allow the update to go through, the matched bank deposit must be unmatched in QuickBooks before Shogo retries the posting.

How to resolve it

QuickBooks Online

  1. In QuickBooks Online, go to Transactions › Bank transactions (or Banking, depending on your version).
  2. Select the bank account where the deposit was matched.
  3. Click the Categorized tab.
  4. Locate the deposit that was matched to the affected journal entry. Filtering by the date of the JE is usually the fastest way to find it.
  5. Click Undo on the right side of the row. The deposit will move back to the For review tab and the match to the original Shogo JE will be released.

For more detail, see Intuit's documentation: Unmatch or edit downloaded bank transactions in QuickBooks Online.

QuickBooks Desktop

  1. Open the bank register for the account where the deposit was matched (Banking › Use Register, then choose the account).
  2. Locate the deposit that was matched to the affected journal entry.
  3. Open the deposit and remove the link to the Shogo-posted JE, or delete the matched downloaded transaction from the Bank Feeds Center so it returns to the unreviewed queue.
  4. Save your changes.
Tip: If the affected JE spans multiple days or your processor batches multiple days into a single deposit, you may need to unmatch more than one deposit. Unmatch every deposit that touches the dates Shogo is attempting to update.

After you've unmatched the deposit(s)

  1. Let Shogo support know that the bank deposits have been unmatched. You can reply to your existing support thread or open a new ticket at support.shogo.io.
  2. We will re-trigger the update so the corrected journal entry posts to your QuickBooks file.
  3. Once the new JE has posted successfully, return to your bank feed in QuickBooks and re-match the bank deposit to the new journal entry. This restores your reconciliation.

How to avoid this going forward

Matched-transaction delete errors most commonly happen when sales data needs to be reloaded or accounting mappings have been changed after the original JE was already reconciled against a bank deposit. A few practices that help:

  • Whenever possible, finalize accounting mappings and confirm sales totals before matching the corresponding deposit in the bank feed.
  • If you know an update is coming (for example, you've asked Shogo to reload sales for a specific date range), hold off on matching the related deposits in QuickBooks until after the update has posted.
  • If you're unsure whether a JE will need to be updated, you can always unmatch and re-match — it's a normal QuickBooks workflow.