Adding, Inactivating, Editing, and Merging

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About this lesson

In this lesson, we go over how to add, edit, merge, and inactivate accounts within the chart of accounts.

Quick reference

Adding, inactivating, editing and merging

You may want to adjust the names on the chart of accounts. This module will show you how.

When to use

Your chart of accounts is not set in stone. Customize it so that your financial reports make sense to you.

Instructions

Adding a new account:

  • Click the green new in the upper right hand corner
  • In the window that pops up:
    • Choose the account type
    • Leave detail type as the default, it doesn't impact your QuickBooks file
    • Change the name to a name that makes sense to you
    • Leave description blank, if you need a description to remind you what the name means, rename it
    • Click save and close

Editing an account:

  • Find an account you wish to edit, click the blue arrow to the right of view register/run report
  • In the dropdown menu, click edit
  • Make your desired changes
  • Click save and close

To merge accounts:

  • Find an account you wish to merge with another, copy the account name you wish to keep
  • Click the blue arrow to the right of view register/run report
  • In the dropdown menu, click edit
  • Paste the account name you previously copied in the name field
  • Click save and close

Inactivating (hiding) an account:

  • Find an account you wish to edit, click the blue arrow to the right of view register/run report
  • In the dropdown menu, click make inactive
  • Click yes to confirm you wish to inactivate the account

Display inactive accounts:

  • Click the little gear on the right side of the screen
  • Check the box that says include inactive

Hints & tips

  • Think about using generic names rather than proper nouns (ie education expense not GoSkills expense)
  • Your tax preparer can export your data to Excel and squish totals together as needed, don't worry about naming your accounts exactly as they will appear on your tax form
  • If you understand the names for your income and expense options, you're more likely to keep up on your bookkeeping
  • If you want extra detail sometimes but not all the time, use sub accounts
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  • 00:04 In this video, I'm going to show you how to customize your Chart of Accounts.
  • 00:08 So first I'll show you a couple ways to get to your Chart of Accounts.
  • 00:12 You can either click on the big gear in the upper right hand corner.
  • 00:15 When that opens, go to Chart of accounts under the column called Your Company.
  • 00:20 That'll take you to this Chart of Accounts.
  • 00:22 Alternatively, and I'm just going to go to the dashboard to kind of reset our screen.
  • 00:27 You can click on the left hand side in the gray bar, click on Accounting and
  • 00:31 then Chart of Accounts.
  • 00:34 That takes us to our Chart of Accounts.
  • 00:36 There's a handful of things that I want to show you how to do here,
  • 00:39 such as how to add an account, how to delete account, how to edit an account.
  • 00:44 For the purpose of this video series,
  • 00:46 I thought it'd be fun if we came up with a backstory, like what we might do.
  • 00:51 So in our make believe company, we're a Race Car Driving School.
  • 00:54 So I went ahead and put some stuff together.
  • 00:57 For our Race Car Driving school,
  • 00:59 we know that we want to track these specific things on our Chart of Accounts.
  • 01:03 There's probably more, but there's going to be some things that
  • 01:06 out of the gate you know you want to keep track of.
  • 01:09 So let's go ahead and add a couple of these so
  • 01:10 that I can show you what that looks like.
  • 01:12 So the first thing I'm going to add is Trading Income.
  • 01:15 I'm going to go to my Chart of Accounts, in the upper right hand corner,
  • 01:18 I'm going to click on the green New, and then I'm going to change my account type.
  • 01:23 I'm thinking about an income account, so
  • 01:24 I'm going to change it from the default of Bank.
  • 01:26 I'm going to make it say Income.
  • 01:29 Over to the right, I'm going to change the name to say Racing Car, or
  • 01:34 I call it, Training Income.
  • 01:38 So Training Income.
  • 01:40 Over here with the Detail Type is,
  • 01:42 it doesn't matter, you don't need to change it.
  • 01:45 Description, you don't need to change that either.
  • 01:48 I really want you to pick a name that makes sense to you, so you don't feel like
  • 01:52 you need to keep track and put extra information in the Description.
  • 01:55 All right, so I'm going to choose Save and Close.
  • 01:59 Let me go back to my list.
  • 02:01 So I know that I also want Instructor Wages Expense and
  • 02:05 Sporty Card #1 in the asset.
  • 02:07 So let me go ahead and add those.
  • 02:10 So the wages are an Expense, Instructor Wages Expense.
  • 02:17 And this time instead I click here on Save and Close,
  • 02:21 I'm going to choose Save and New.
  • 02:23 I'm going to make an Asset, Sporty Car #1 and
  • 02:29 then I'll Save and Close.
  • 02:33 The rest of the accounts I'll add when I'm not recording,
  • 02:35 I just wanted to give you a sense of this is how we add stuff.
  • 02:39 Now, I want to show you how to edit things.
  • 02:42 Let's say for example, that you're looking at your Chart of Accounts and you say,
  • 02:45 you know, I really would like this to say something else.
  • 02:48 For example, our business checking says Business Checking 1234.
  • 02:52 Maybe we just want it to say Checking 1234.
  • 02:57 Over to the right,
  • 02:58 I'm going to click the drop down arrow next to the blue, View register.
  • 03:02 I'm going to then select Edit.
  • 03:05 And I'm going to modify anything that I want in the name.
  • 03:08 So in this case, I just want to delete the word Business, so
  • 03:12 now it just says Checking 1234.
  • 03:14 I'm going to choose Save and Close.
  • 03:17 Another thing that might come up is you might realize that you want to merge
  • 03:19 things.
  • 03:20 A really good example here is I have Billable Expense Income followed by
  • 03:25 Billable Expense Income 37, 38, etc.
  • 03:28 Maybe I just want one account called Billable Expense Income.
  • 03:32 I'm going to go ahead and
  • 03:34 modify this one with the parentheses 37 to match the name of the one above it.
  • 03:39 When I do that, it's going to merge the two accounts together.
  • 03:43 So to do that, I'm going to click the arrow to the right of Run Report.
  • 03:46 I'm going to choose Edit.
  • 03:47 I'm going to wipe out the text to the right of Billable Expense Income,
  • 03:52 and then I'm going to click on Save and Close.
  • 03:57 A pop up appears saying this name is already in use.
  • 04:00 Would you like to merge them?
  • 04:02 I'm going to say Yes.
  • 04:04 And now it's merged.
  • 04:07 So if you find yourself for you've set up an extra account by mistake or
  • 04:10 you set up an account, you want to rename it, you now know how to do that.
  • 04:14 If you find that you're in a situation where the account you have in mind doesn't
  • 04:18 show up on the list, but you really want to add it, you know how to do that.

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