Cleaning up the Chart of Accounts by Merging Accounts in QuickBooks
Cleaning up the Chart of Accounts by Merging
Accounts in QuickBooks
Over the year, you may
have wished you had set up your QuickBooks chart of accounts differently. Perhaps
there are too many account numbers or the information doesn't consolidate on
the financial statements the way you would like. Look at the reports you are
giving to the executive director, pastor, or governing board and listen to the
questions they have been asking. If you find yourself having to prepare
spreadsheets or answer the same questions each month, ask yourself, "Could
I use the chart of accounts to group this information better?".
When changing the
church or nonprofit's chart of accounts, you will want the new account
structure to include the data in the old accounts. Otherwise any comparisons to
last year information will be compromised. To do this in QuickBooks, you will
simply merge the new account with the old one. This works as long as both
accounts have the same account type (i.e. expense, income, etc.).
First back up your system. Then go to Lists, Chart of Accounts. Find the
account you would like to move the information into and write down the account
number. Now go to the account you would like to move the data out of.Right click on this account and select Edit. Change the account number to the
number of the account you want to move it to and hit Save. The system will warn you it is in use and ask if you are
sure. Select Yes and you can click
on the merged account to see the new data.
There is also a video
to take you through the process under FAQs,Video Tutorials. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/accountantbesideyou to be notified as more videos are added.
If you have purchased
a chart of accounts iif file to upload for a nonprofit or church from my
website, the system will do the merging automatically, taking your old numbers
and moving them into the new imported numbers. Any of the accounts it cannot
find a natural match for will be left alone for you to determine if you would
like change.
Next week, I'll go
over how to clean up year-end pledge and tithe balances. Hope your New Year is
a happy one.
