Have you been using QuickBooks for years and still have that nagging feeling it was never set up right for your business? 🤔

That feeling usually traces back to one list.

Not your bank feeds, not your reports, the list sitting underneath both of them.

Your Chart of Accounts. 

It is every account inside your QuickBooks, and it is the backbone of the whole thing.

Every report you pull and every transaction you enter runs straight through it, and most people get handed a default list when QuickBooks is first set up and then never open it again.

So today I am giving you the tour.

 

Your reports do not make up their own titles.

When you pull your Profit and Loss, you see your income, your different types of expenses, and a total at the bottom.

That is the report you use to file your taxes.

Your Balance Sheet fills in the rest, your assets, your liabilities, and your equity.

Both of those reports read their titles straight off your Chart of Accounts. Once you see that, your reports stop feeling random.

 

Where to find it.

Go to All apps, then Accounting, then Chart of Accounts.

If you use bookmarks, you can pin it and land there in one click instead of three.

 

QuickBooks sorts the list for you.

Your bank accounts come first, then your liabilities, then your equity, and those are all balance sheet accounts.

After that come your income accounts and your expenses, including cost of goods, and those are your Profit and Loss accounts.

 

A bonus tip most people never find.

If you are not seeing a little B or P&L next to each account, click the settings wheel and check the show report type badges.

Now you can see which report each account feeds without guessing.

 

How to run a quick audit.

Pull your Profit and Loss and set the date range to All dates. That shows you every account you have ever used.

Then run it again for this year.

Between those two, you can see what you are using now and what has been sitting there untouched since setup.

Take that list into your Chart of Accounts and ask one question about each account.

Does this make sense for my business?

 

Do not delete, make it inactive.

Inactive means you are done using it and the history stays intact.

Only make an account inactive when the balance is zero, and be extra careful there with your assets, liabilities, and equity.

Income and expense accounts are more forgiving, if you are not using one anymore, you can make it inactive.

 

Be careful renaming.

Your account names follow your business for as long as you are in QuickBooks.

If you have been filing taxes off these reports for five or ten years, renaming an account changes how your past reads.

Make the old one inactive and add a new one instead.

 

Want the account types spelled out?

I put together a PDF guide that walks through assets, liabilities, equity, income, and expenses, with the sub-types sitting under each one.

You can grab it here: https://canduskampfer.com/COA-O-C 

 

Your homework.

Open your Chart of Accounts and read your own list.

See what is in there.

That one habit changes how you enter transactions, because you start noticing that the account you pick is the line your Profit and Loss is going to show.

 

Looking for another video in this series? Click the link below.
“QuickBooks Modern Reports Explained: The 3 Reports Every Business Owner Should Check”
“How to Enter Expenses in QuickBooks Online the Right Way”
“How to Record Income in QuickBooks Online (3 Ways)”

 

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If your QuickBooks has never felt like it was built for your business, that is exactly what my free Customizing QuickBooks workshop is for.

We go through which features you want turned on, which ones you can ignore, and how to shape QuickBooks around the way your business runs day to day.

Cost of goods, the one that trips up almost everybody, gets its own walkthrough in there.

Save your seat here: https://canduskampfer.com/learn

 

Want a QuickBooks tip in your inbox every week? 

Join my email list for a new tip every week at CandusKampfer.com

Come say hi on Instagram, find me on Facebook, and subscribe on YouTube so you never miss a tutorial. 💡

 

Now I would love to hear from you: what’s the one thing you want cleaned up in your QuickBooks?

Tell me in the comments. ⤵️

#CandusKampfer