Hi Glinette,

I truly appreciate the time you took to reply here.  I am trying hard but just can't make sense of the difference between checks and expenses.

• Check and Expenses are for services or items paid on the spot.
• If you need to print a check, record an expense as a Check, instead of an Expense.
• If you paid something via credit card, use Expense.
  How is this different from a check?  Obviously a check would imply a bank account, but the credit for a credit card tx would simply go to the credit card liability account instead of a bank asset account. 
  True that one wouldn't normally print something paid by credit card, but the only difference here is whether the user clicks a 'print' button or not.  If it's a credit card payment the user wouldn't attempt to print something because there's obviously no reason to do so.  If a check, the user would click the 'print' button.  It gets even worse in the next bullet below...
• If you paid something via EFT, you should still use Check or Expense. You can enter EFT in the Check no. field.
  This is EXACTLY the same as a check except that one wouldn't normally "print" something for an EFT but would print a check.  The debits and credits are EXACTLY the same.  The only difference is using the letters EFT in the check number field instead of a number corresponding to a printed check.  The accounting is EXACTLY the same so what would make someone choose 'Check' vs 'Expense'?

So, the key difference is that a Check transaction includes the check number detail, which can be printed, while an Expense transaction does not.
Got it.  But both 'expenses' and 'checks' have a reference number (aka check number) so there's really no functional difference between the two things beyond confusing the accounting.  If someone posts an EFT tx as a check one day and and posts another EFT tx as an expense a week later, those items will be treated differently, making it difficult to manage the accounting.
Intuit did this for a reason but the reason still eludes me.
This sort of 'accounting perversion' make me reluctant to continue my transition from Desktop to OnLine.

Just for fun I'll mention one other 'accounting perversion' that's hard to grasp.
Suppose I bill a customer for some work and they pay the invoice.  Then suppose a month later I want to refund $100 to that customer for some reason.

It's easy enough to credit the customer $100, but if I want to send them a check for that amount it is impossible to show that payment (a banking tx) in the customer view so there's no way to see the events that took place when viewing the customer data.

Pretty discouraged by these illogical OnLine-isms.