Tabitha_at_Koda, thank you kindly for your lengthy reply. I am appreciative of the time you spent. However, it also does not answer my question or solve this problem. 

1) Regarding sales receipts, you wrote "the only way to work around this is to check the report manually every month"...but you didn't mention which report. (QB Says it doesn't exist...except...see below.)

2) Invoices won't work for the reasons you state. We need automatic recurring transactions that do not require manual work. It's the simplest thing to do is most other accounting systems...but not QBO.

To recap, here are my situations:

a) The recurring sales receipt template doesn't have a payment method set.
b) The recurring sales receipt template has a payment method set, but doesn't have the "Process Payment" box checked
c) The selected payment method fails when the sales receipt is generated.

A&B are actually the same problem -- no payment is attempted. I do still do not have a solution for these.

C is the more common issue, where the payment fails. And I do think I have a solution.

And here are my questions for either A, B or C:

1) How can we generate a report of all Sales Reciepts that show as PAID but are actually NOT PAID?
2) How can I apply a payment to a Sales Receipt that shows as paid but is not actually paid?

I am as annoyed as ever with Quickbooks for not fixing this VERY BASIC ACCOUNTING PROBLEM. It's bad bookkeeping, bad business, and BAD SOFTWARE.

I do have a partial solution to this for situation C, where the sales receipt payment was attempted but the credit card payment fails.

1) How do you generate a report of failed Sales Receipts? 

Two Answers:

You can get a list of ALL Sales Receipts. The ones that failed stand out in RED. To do this: 

• From the Sales menu, choose "All Sales"
• Click "Filter" and under "Type" choose "Sales Receipts"
• The ones that failed will show a status of "Paid (Payment failed)" in RED.

Here's a better solution: 

• On your Dashboard, in the "Get Things Done" tab (which I think is the default tab), if there are failed transactions, you will see an alert box that says "Alert. Several customer credit card payments were declined. Although the transactions are stamped PAID, the payments failed. To fix: Go to Payment Processing Errors and take the recommended actions." 
• Click the Payment Processing Errors link in the message, and that will take you to a screen called "Credit Card Processing Errors". Or just go here: https://app.qbo.intuit.com/app/masfailures
• All of your failed sales receipts will be listed there.

Hallelujah!

Now, regarding the next question...

2) How can I apply a payment to a Sales Receipt that shows as paid but is not actually paid?

• On the Credit Card Processing Errors screen, you will see an "Edit" button on each line. Click that.
• You will then see the actual sales receipt.
• If you want to try the same credit card again, click the "Process Again" box (below the payment method) and click "Save".
• QB will try again to process the transaction.
• If you want to try a different credit card (ie the client's card expired and they give you new info), click the Payment Method button (just as you did when creating the Sales Receipt template) and enter in new CC information. 
• Once you're done entering the CC information, click the "Process Again" box and click "Save". 

We still do not have a solution for problems A&B (where the payment info was not entered, or the "Process Payment" box was not checked in the template. THIS IS STILL AN OPEN ITEM, and happens to be the problem I am dealing with right now. 

But back to the solution I've just written above...

Why don't any of the support people at Quickbooks know these answers I just listed? In this thread, we are told time after time by QB Support FOR OVER A YEAR that there is no report. But it DOES exist. And those dopey support agents are just too clueless about their own software to know it, or they weren't trained well enough to know better.

I wasted a year on this. I hope the solution helps others. 

And if anyone else can think of a solution to A&B, I would greatly appreciate your writing about it.

Thank you.

-Mark

p.s. I firmly believe that Quickbooks should not hire any support staff who have not been small business owners and actually had to rely on the QBO software to get their job done.