 QuickBooks Online 2023. Delete general ledger accounts or make inactive. Get ready to start moving on up with QuickBooks Online 2023. Here we are in our bank feeds practice file. We started up in a prior presentation using the 30-day free trial. We also have open the free QuickBooks Online sample company. If you want the two open at the same time, we suggest using the incognito window or another browser to open the sample company. If you're using Google Chrome as your browser, you can open incognito by selecting the three dots in the browser, new incognito window, then type into the search engine, QuickBooks Online, test drive, verifying the URL that you select has into it in it, into it being the owner of QuickBooks. Now we're gonna be using the sample company to compare and contrast the accountant view and the business view. Let's take a look at what that is and give a quick overview of where things are located and then we'll jump into the chart of accounts. Now, when we first set up the bank feeds practice file, they have set it up in the business view. And you can tell by the information on the left-hand side, the icons on the left-hand side, the business view is what I would call like a less professional language type of view, but it might work better also on some machine. So it might work better so you're like opening it up on a phone or something other than a standard type of computer. So you might practice with that as well. The accountant view where if you hit the cog dropdown, you could switch to the accountant view is the more classical type of view and it has more professional kind of language. So let's go over that really quickly here. You've got the get things done page instead of the home page. You've got the business overview, banking, get paid and paid area. That's kind of like the customer center or you might call it the sales area or expensive center or vendor area, so get paid. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website, broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. So that's what I mean by the less professional kind of language, more common or relaxed language, I guess. Customers and leads, commerce, payroll, and then you've got the bookkeeping whereas the other view might use like accounting or something like that taxes and so on. Let's switch it over to the accountant view to look at the difference. I'm gonna go to the cog dropdown, switch it to the accountant view. This is the view that I've worked with most often I'm more comfortable with. So this is gonna be my default view but then I'll go back and forth to the sample company so that we can see the business view. So I'm gonna try to keep it in the accountant view and then see where different things are located by jumping over to the sample company from time to time to see the different views. So now it's called the dashboard which is kind of a little bit more professional possibly than and then banking, sales rather than get paid area and customers flow, cash flows, expenses instead of the pay area, get pay and pay area. And then you've got like the accounting down below. Note that this has kind of more of a drop like a similar to a dropdown, a drop to the side or open to the side kind of view which works well if you're on a PC. I've seen it works great for me but if you're in like an app or something like that maybe the other view has some advantages to working like on a phone or a tablet that you might want to experiment with if you're using different kinds of devices. But the bottom line is that everything should be able to be found in both of these views. It's just housed in a different way. Those differences mainly being in the groupings on the left bar over here which we'll try to go into as we go into some of the information. Now just a quick overview of how to navigate around here and then we'll dive into the chart of accounts. The middle areas where the display area is so when you're selecting where to go it's usually gonna be on the left hand side or up here generally like in the cog. So if you're entering normal day to day transactions oftentimes you can hit the new button they're grouped by customers by cycle I would say customer vendor and employee and then other these are the where the normal forms are located that actually create the financial statements that generate the end result of the financial statements they create the transactions that result in the financial statements. And then when you're trying to deal with customers and what not and vendors and employees we can search those by centers over here. So if I'm dealing with customers I'll typically go into this area which I would call like the customer center has our sales cycle related stuff. This area down here for the expenses helps us deal with vendors who we buy stuff from has purchasing related stuff and obviously we have the payroll related stuff and then the accounting has some of our chart of accounts and things like that. Up top in the cog we have some of our setup process. So if I wanted to go into the account and settings then this would go into basically our overall settings that we can review those items if I wanted to add users and so on it would be in here. And then if I wanted to go into my lists these are my underlying kind of lists the main two lists we think of are products and services and the chart of accounts although you can get into those by going to other locations than in here. So just be aware of that you're probably not gonna go into the cog and lists all the time to find the chart of accounts or the products and services but classically they've been called lists as kind of a legacy from the desktop view where they were located under a dropdown under lists. Now if you were in the business view then you're gonna have the get paid and paid area has kind of like the customer cycle and the vendor cycle kind of grouped together and then when you wanna get into the chart of accounts it's gonna be under the bookkeeping and then the chart of accounts. So this is where we're gonna work on here there's your chart of accounts that's what we're gonna go now. So I'm gonna go to the left hand side and go down to accounting. And so now we're under the accounting and here's the chart of accounts. Now we just set up this customer, this account and we tried to have it so they didn't give us a chart of account but we don't really have the option when we set it up to not give us the chart of account because I'd like to practice creating the chart of account with the bank feeds because that'll help us to fully understand how the bank feeds work how we enter transactions with the bank feeds but when we set up anytime you set up a QuickBooks file they basically mandatory give you this massive chart of accounts. Now the general rule I would have with this chart of accounts is that I would use it I would say here's the chart of accounts I'm gonna start to do my data input if you're setting up a company file from scratch and you're starting up a new business then this could be a good template to start off with with your chart of accounts. Notice that most of the flexibility with the chart of accounts is often down here in the expenses area because that's where you have the most differences in the largest list of account types down here that oftentimes are created as we do transactions such as the bank feed data input as we make payments. So as a general rule you might say okay I'm gonna start doing my transactions and if there's a chart of accounts down here that fits what I'm doing then I'm gonna use whatever chart of accounts that they set up with the assumption that that's gonna be somewhat standard account categorization. If there's not an account that I think is exactly the way I like it but they have a similar type of account or they have an account that is a subsidiary account and I don't want it to be a subsidiary account or something like that then I'll use that account and I'll go ahead and edit the account that I want to change. So I'll go in here and I'll change it so it's not a subsidiary account and I'll change the name to what I want as opposed to making another account that is similar in name because if I do that it's likely that I start to post to multiple different accounts for the same thing. It'll kind of mess thing and that'll mess things up and then if there's no account at all for what I want to set up then I will create a new account and then after two months or so of data input you might wanna then go into this chart of accounts and start to make the accounts that you're not using inactive. Otherwise you've got all these accounts that could make it a little bit difficult to do certain things like budgeting or when I select the dropdown for example for a form for like an invoice if I was to enter like an invoice and I'm trying to hit or not let's do a bill if I was gonna enter like a bill or an expense type of form enter an expense form and I select the dropdown for the category which is the chart of accounts I've got this massive list of accounts in here I'd like to limit that to accounts that I'm actually using and that will make it a little bit easier for those kind of things. So, but in our practice problem what I'd like to do is basically remove as many of the accounts as possible so we can see how we can construct the chart of accounts and after constructing the chart of accounts see how those are used to construct the financial statements balance sheet and income statement as we actually do the data input directly from the bank feeds. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go through all of these and I'm gonna delete all the accounts that they basically will let me delete. Now I can't actually delete them which is kind of annoying even though there's no activity in it but I can make them inactive. So I'm gonna go through all the accounts that they're gonna allow me to make inactive and make them inactive. So cash, I'll keep the cash account because maybe this is a bank type of account and maybe I'll use that as a checking account. The accounts receivable I don't think they're gonna let us delete the accounts receivable because it has a sub ledger you might not use it but we have it there and it is what it is it shouldn't bother us too much. Inventory, we're gonna use inventory so I'll keep of the inventory account. Now note it's kind of strange that they have an inventory and an inventory asset account. What I kind of like to do I don't want two of these cause you seem somewhat redundant. I'd like to see which of these two accounts is the one that they default to when whenever I set up like an item or something like that to do that I'm gonna right click on the tab up top and duplicate and I'm gonna pull this to the left and then I'm gonna go down to let's go down to the sales area and then I'm gonna go into my products and services and by the way if you're in the other view that would be the sales areas in the get paid and pay area and then it would be get paid area and products and services. So that's where I'm located. And so if I'm gonna pretend I'm gonna add a product I won't actually add it but I'm gonna pretend I'm gonna add an inventory item and I'm gonna say okay which account do they default to? They default to inventory asset account as opposed to that other inventory account. Why do they have two of them? I don't know. So I'm gonna say let's use that inventory asset account as my default and I'm gonna make the other one inactive. So I'm gonna say let's make this inactive cause they won't let me delete it. Are you sure you want to? I'm gonna say yes so that one has been made inactive. And then loans to others I'm gonna try to make all of this inactive. I'm gonna say make it inactive and I'll just build these as we go. Payments to deposit that's kind of like the undeposited funds account. I don't think they'll allow us to make that inactive and it might be a useful account if in some cases so we might dive into that a little bit later. Prepaid expenses I'm gonna make it inactive make it inactive and then uncategorized assets that's like their dumping ground account if there's a transaction that was entered that they don't know where to put it and it's an asset account. So I don't think they're gonna let us make that inactive. I'm gonna make all these inactive for the fixed assets building somewhat standard but if I don't have a building I'm gonna make it inactive. I'll add the assets when I get them land I'll make it inactive and then we've got the uncategorized longterm. I think I gotta make all the sub accounts inactive and then I can make the longterm office equipment. Notice the way they set up their fixed assets is really I don't think in alignment with what you might do if you're working with say a tax preparer and trying to use tax software. So when you get to your fixed assets you might wanna talk to your accountant to see how they're gonna be doing the sub ledgers so that you can have your fixed assets tie out to what they're doing on the sub ledgers to calculate the depreciation. So that's one area where I would deviate from my normal strategy of using their accounts as the default, right? I would possibly change those right up front whereas the expense accounts I would use their accounts basically as the default. So I'm just gonna go through here and make all these inactive that I can. They have a massive amount of accounts down here in the fixed assets for some odd reason. Gonna make it inactive. And then we've got the tools, longterm office equipment I'll make that inactive. Okay, doke. And then we've got the tools machinery let's make that inactive. And then vehicles, I'll make that inactive. I'll set them up myself when I get to those items. I don't think I can make accounts payable unactive and so I'll keep that one there because that has a sub ledger that's tied to it. Customer prepayments, I'll make that inactive. That would only be necessary for certain types of businesses. Lines of credit, I'll make that inactive. You would only have that in certain situations of course. So this massive chart of accounts that they put together here, you've got short term business loans. I'll make that inactive. When I set up a loan, I'll add a loan account. And then you've got the longterm business loans. I'll make that inactive. You've got your mortgages, which is a personal thing. Again, it's a business. So it's kind of a random thing to have in there for every type of business that they set up because it just made some massive chart of accounts for and then sales tax payable. I'm not sure I can make that inactive because I might have sales tax. So I'll leave that one there. Federal estimated taxes, I'm gonna make that inactive. Make it inactive. Opening balance equity. We can't make that inactive because that's like their dumping ground account again if they have to make something be in balance. So we might have to deal with that. We'll talk with that later. Draws, we might deal with draw. So that might be necessary for a sole proprietorship. Well, let's make it. I'll go with my policy of making an inactive and then I'll create a draws account when we need to deal with it. And then investment, not always gonna be there for a business because you might put it in but I'll make it inactive. We'll possibly make an investment account and show you what's up with that when we do that. Personal expenses, personal expenses, federal taxes, sales tax. I'm gonna make these inactive. Make inactive. I'm gonna make the sub accounts inactive first and then go to the others. So opening that personal state taxes, I'm gonna make inactive. So these are in the equity. So they put a ton of stuff like kind of like in the equity to try to categorize in the equity section which again is a little kind of strange. Some people might like to do it that way but it's really kind of cluttering up the equity section down here, which a lot of, again, personal health insurance. Again, this is, I could see what they're trying to do to try to help out with taxes for sole proprietorship but again, they put it into every account even if you're a corporation I think they put it so it seems kind of odd. So it seems, so I'm gonna take that out and then personal health care gonna remove that. Now they're not gonna let us take out retained earnings because that's the account that we're gonna close everything out into. It's called retained earnings though and we should probably call it like owner's equity or something because we're a sole proprietorship. So maybe I'll edit that one and call it owner's equity because I'm a sole proprietor. It's the same kind of thing but I'm not a corporation owner's equity. I'm not sure where the apostrophe goes. I get confused all the time on that. Does it go before or after? Whatever. You idiot. All right. State estimated taxes. All right, I'm gonna make that one inactive and let's see and then I'm gonna make all the income and expenses inactive that I can. So they might, this billable expense income that might be necessary if you use billable items. So they might not let me deal. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna, whoop. They may edit it. I'm trying to make it inactive. Make that inactive and they let me make it. So I think I can assign it to a different account. We'll deal with that maybe later. Refunds, I'm gonna make it inactive and what happened? K-Passo, man. K-Passo, let's go all the way to the bottom. Let's go to the bottom up now. That might be easier. Vehicles and wash road, I'm gonna make it inactive. Make it inactive, going all the way to the bottom. Vehicle repairs and other expense, I'm gonna make it inactive. And I'm gonna go all the way to the bottom. A vehicle registration, make it inactive. Like look at all this stuff they put under, under the vehicle expenses. Again, some people might do that. You know, I can see where they're going with it maybe, but that's like really a lot of detail, really a lot. So I'm gonna make it inactive. Just gonna keep on doing this because there's just, this is just too much. You just have too much going on here. Notice how they're using the sub-accounts. They're using a lot of sub-accounts. Some people really like the sub-accounts. Some people might go overboard on the sub-accounts. Some people might not use enough sub-accounts. The sub-accounts kind of help you to group your expenses in a way that they can be in some kind of order without using account numbers, which has its own kind of pros and cons of using the account numbers. Cause if you don't use them properly, you can kind of mess things up. So now I'm deleting all the stuff in the home office, which they kind of set up, that line lends itself to like a sole proprietorship that might be riding off like a home office situation. But again, it wouldn't be applicable in certain businesses if you're possibly like a corporation or something like that. So we've got all this detail that they're trying to kind of mishmash everything together to fit everybody in one massive chart of accounts which probably many people see as just overwhelming cause they don't know exactly what's going on. They might be better off just making our own expense accounts here. Depreciation, we'll have to deal with that maybe. We'll look at that later. And then other income accounts. I'm scrolling all the way down. Other income accounts. We'll remove these. They've got a whole bunch of other income accounts down here. So other income means it's not gonna be at the top of the income statement, but like at the bottom of the income statement after operating income. That's why they're down below the expenses. We might deal with some other income accounts as we do our data input. But I don't need like a hundred of them. And then now we're to our expenses. So we've got a bunch of different kind of utilities now. So a lot of times people might wanna break out all their utilities into a sub-account, but maybe you don't. Maybe you just wanna put them all under utilities so you don't have like 10,000 accounts. Some people might wanna do it that way. So let's go, we'll talk more about that when we get into our data input for the utilities, the electric, the gas and stuff, the telephone. Do you wanna put those into multiple accounts? When might you wanna put them into multiple accounts? Do you wanna use a sub-account strategy for it? Should they be categorized like the telephone under utilities anymore? Or is that just old? Is that like old? No one does that anymore. Telephone's its own thing now, man. You can't delete uncategorized thing. I don't think because that's gonna be another kind of a plug for QuickBooks to force you to be in balance if you do something funny. Such as try to force a bank reconciliation. Once again, travel. We've got all the sub-categories for travel and whatnot. Is that necessary for everybody? I mean, do I have to have like a hundred things under travel? I just do gig work here, man. I just do gig work, okay? I don't need like, what is all this? Think I'm some politician in the Bahamas all the time or something with my travel costs. Some global warming concert. Well, I'm sitting there with my coconut cocktail. Anyways, I'm gonna delete the taxes stuff and delete that. All right, and then scrolling down supplies. That's a pretty standard expense. Why do we need a sub-category for it like that? I don't know. They had a sub-category with one thing under it. What's the point of that? What's the point of the sub-category? Salaries and wages. I'll delete that. We'll deal with payroll in our own way. Materials and maintenance or repairs and maintenance. Purchases, that's a pretty standard account. Purchases and not even sure what that means. Kind of sounds like inventory to me. Wages under the payroll expense now. And then the payroll expenses parent account. And then they've got office expenses with this huge list of stuff under office expenses, which includes office supplies. Again, didn't I already delete a supplies account? For goodness gracious's sake, man. There's just, it's just massive, massive. We're just gonna make our own accounts. It'll be way more streamlined. A stream of a line, like a river stream that's nice and fresh. So we're gonna go down. And then you got the meals, of course. Por su puesto, gonna delete the meals. And we're gonna delete the meals with clients. And we're gonna delete the meals total. And then the legal, which they broke out into a legal fees and accounting fees. So I'm gonna remove those as well. Isn't this tedious? That's because they made a jazillion accounts. A jazillion, man. That's a lot. It's like the national debt or something. So we're gonna just remove all these. Now we're into interests. So we got a hundred different kinds of interest. You can't just say interest, expense, no. And then they call it interest paid. What if you accrued the interest, but you didn't pay it? It's not even proper lingo. The lingo's wrong, because it doesn't have to be paid to be an expense. And then insurance, you've got like a hundred types of insurances down here. We'll delete those. We'll put the insurances in as we pay the insurance. Don't you worry, we'll do it way better. We'll make it way better based on our expenses without having the jazillion accounts. It's just ridiculous. Now we've got the general expenses. Uniforms, really? Uniforms? Not every business pays for uniforms. I don't know what in the world. I'm just gonna delete all the general bad debt, bank fees, and then almost there, we are almost there. And then general equipment rental, equipment rental. All right, entertainment again. Didn't we already have an entertainment account? They're just doubling up on accounts now. And then we've got employee benefits. Remove all these employee benefits. Okay, okay, okay. I mean, is it just me or is this just an overkill? You killed it like a hundred times. You killed it way back, way back. And then you just kept driving the car over the poor possum like a hundred more times. Contributions to charity. I'm not sure that should even be on the business side of things. Contract, labor, okay. And then almost there. All right, and then we've got business license. All right. And then building rent. Didn't we already have a rent one as well? Equipment and, for crying out loud, for crying out loud social media account, I need to break out my social media expenses. My Twitter costs, Twitter costs me a lot, but it's mainly from my reputation being slandered. Shipping. Okay, it's not in dollars typically. Now I already have a cost of goods sold up here, so I'm gonna delete all this other cost of goods sold. Delete all that. Maybe I'll keep just the one cost of goods sold account. And so I'll just delete all this stuff. Delete all this stuff. I'll just keep that one cost of goods sold. Okay, I think finally, and then all the income accounts. We've got service, you got sales and sales of products. These two seem redundant. So I'm gonna get rid of the sales account, and then maybe I'll keep just the sales of product and the services. So those are my main two categories of sales. I either sell products or I have services I sell. Cost of goods sold is linked to the sales of inventory items, and some of these other accounts are kind of like mandatory accounts that QuickBooks uses, either having sub-ledgers or they use it to force reconciliation in the event that you try to force a bank reconciliation to reconcile or something like that. All right, so that was quite a tedious long process, but now you can see we're working with a lot less stuff here and we can just construct, we'll actually build our chart of accounts as we enter data directly from the bank feeds.