The article you linked is not totally correct. In step 3: This optional step (if you hold retainers in a separate bank account) suggests to open a liability bank account by selecting 'other current liabilities'. This is not correct as this is not a bank account. For the actual bank account where the retainers land, that bank account would have to be an asset (bank), otherwise, the debit and credit can't balance out (money goes into the bank account as a debit to the bank and then you credit the liability account (created in step 2) to balance the transaction.  This reflects what's really happening as well. While theoretically, on paper, you could make the debits and credits work by making a bank account a liability account and then reflecting a debit (instead of a credit) when money goes into that bank account, it's not as straight forward, plus it doesn't work with QB software. For example, in QB Online, you can't deposit money into a liability account when creating a sales receipt (like it suggests in article) because it's not an asset account. It would be great if QB could revisit the article and fix it so as to avoid future customer confusion.