How to Create New, Delete, Inactivate and Merge Accounts
Knowing how to manage your QuickBooks accounts is crucial. Each time you create an invoice or enter a bill for your business, you are either accessing one of your existing customer or vendor names, or creating a new one. Within that invoice or bill, you are creating or accessing an account from your Chart of Accounts when you choose which income or expense account to classify an amount.
As a result, these lists will become lengthy over time. Some accounts will become inactive. Duplicates may exist, especially if more than one person in your business enters data. Accounts may be set up in error.
Reviewing these accounts quarterly, or at least yearly, will make your accounting tasks more efficient. You will no longer have a long list to choose from when entering invoices and bills. You will also have cleaner aging summaries and financial statements.
We’ve created a 3-minute tutorial on how to manage your accounts in QuickBooks Desktop. In the video below, we will demonstrate how to:
- Create new accounts
- Delete never-used accounts
- Inactivate currently unused accounts
- Merge similar types of accounts
Reminders as you manage your accounts
- If you delete an account, it’s gone forever. (QuickBooks will always verify when you click to delete an account.)
- If you inactivate an account, you can easily activate it again.
- QuickBooks will not allow you to delete an account that has had transactions; you can only inactivate it.
- Merging means taking two separate accounts and merging them into one account.
- For example: Blue Cross Blue Shield that also was set up as BCBS or Jane A. Smith that was also set up as Jane Smith
- All transactions from both accounts will be included in the merged account.
If you found this tutorial video helpful and would like more tips and tricks, check out one of our monthly QuickBooks Training classes. Or, if you have a specific question that you’re stuck on, contact us. We’re happy to help!