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About this lesson

We explore where to find the chart of accounts, how to edit the list, the default order and how to sort the chart of account to other orders.

Exercise files

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Chart of Accounts
60.8 KB Chart of Accounts - Solution
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Quick reference

Chart of Accounts

All transactions in your accounting software has at least one debit and one credit, each of these are assigned an account. The chart of accounts is a listing of these accounts.

When to use

If you want to change, add, edit or review the accounts on the chart of accounts, you'll come to this list. This is not the only place to add accounts but it's a handy place to get to know.

Instructions

The columns are:

  • Name
  • Type
  • Detail type
  • QuickBooks balance
  • Bank balance

Sorting can be done by:

  • Type -- this means sort in order of balance sheet accounts followed by profit and loss accounts
  • Name -- this means sort alphabetically

Hints & tips

  • Use the little gear to hide detail type. Detail type isn't helpful and is often a distraction.
  • Use filter by name when you know the name you're looking for
  • If the blue hyperlink says “view register” that means this account is on your balance sheet otherwise it’s on the profit and loss
  • Click the pencil to rapidly rename accounts
  • For no good reason, you'll find that the word accounts is replaced with the word category depending on where you're looking in QuickBooks
  • You are limited to 250 accounts in your chart of accounts before you need to upgrade to the Advanced edition of QuickBooks Online. Don't let this worry you, most people are not going to reach this limit.
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  • 00:05 Hi, in this video I want to talk to you about the chart of accounts.
  • 00:09 First I want to show you two different routes to get to the chart of accounts.
  • 00:13 The first is to click on the big gear in the upper right hand corner.
  • 00:18 Once that's opened under the column called YOUR COMPANY,
  • 00:21 you can click on Chart of accounts.
  • 00:24 This brings up your chart of accounts.
  • 00:27 I'm going to click Dashboard just to reset my screen.
  • 00:30 The second way to get to the chart of accounts is to come down in the left
  • 00:34 hand menu, the grey bar on the left, click on Accounting, and then click on Chart
  • 00:39 of Accounts and this will open up the chart of accounts as well.
  • 00:43 Once your chart of accounts is open, I want you to see a couple of things.
  • 00:47 First, there's a handful of columns.
  • 00:49 There's the NAME column, which is the name of the income account or expense,
  • 00:53 a calendar, asset, a calendar, whatever, it's the name of the account.
  • 00:57 The second is the TYPE and this represents where you're going to find it.
  • 01:01 So things like assets will be on your balance sheet and things like income and
  • 01:05 expenses will be on the profit and loss.
  • 01:07 The third column is the DETAIL TYPE column, the DETAIL TYPE does not matter.
  • 01:12 So as you're looking at this,
  • 01:14 don't worry about the fact that it doesn't always make sense.
  • 01:17 The fourth column is the QUICKBOOKS BALANCE, and
  • 01:20 the QUICKBOOKS BALANCE just means, this is the running balance of what
  • 01:24 you've told QuickBooks is in this particular account.
  • 01:27 So in the Alaska Airlines credit card account,
  • 01:30 we've told QuickBooks that there's a balance of $26,000.
  • 01:35 The bank balance represents the amount of money that the bank thinks you have.
  • 01:39 So those two numbers might be different because you might have stuff in your to do
  • 01:44 list stuff, that's downloaded from the bank that you haven't yet processed,
  • 01:48 or there could be pending charges or pending deposits.
  • 01:51 If you're ever curious you can come over to the right and
  • 01:54 click on View register, and you can see that's what's in my register.
  • 01:58 So in this case, there's literally just one thing.
  • 02:02 A payment and this is all make-believe, but
  • 02:05 a payment of $26,000 which is why it's showing a balance of -26.
  • 02:09 Basically, it's telling us we've overpaid their credit card by 26,000,
  • 02:15 not so realistic.
  • 02:16 All right, let me go back to the chart of accounts.
  • 02:19 There's a handful of ways to sort the chart of accounts, by default,
  • 02:23 it's sorted by TYPE.
  • 02:24 It is sorted with that balance sheet accounts on top and
  • 02:27 then the profit and loss accounts on the bottom.
  • 02:30 If that's confusing to you for any reason, you could always just click on NAME and
  • 02:34 say I'd like to sort it alphabetically by name, either A to Z, or click again and
  • 02:39 get it to go Z to A.
  • 02:41 There's a third way to sort and that's by QUICKBOOKS BALANCE,
  • 02:45 really I can see no benefit to doing that.
  • 02:48 So I want you to see this is how you get here, this is how you can sort so
  • 02:53 if I want to look up say software expense, I can search by name.
  • 02:57 If I say I remember seeing something but, I don't see it on my list,
  • 03:01 is it still here was I just imagining I saw it?
  • 03:04 I can type and find it.
  • 03:06 So there's some pretty cool stuff you can do, you don't have to spend
  • 03:09 a lot of time on the chart of accounts after you get your QuickBooks setup, but
  • 03:13 I think it's important to know what it is and where to find it.
  • 03:17 All of the accounts on the chart of accounts will either show up on the profit
  • 03:21 and loss or it'll show up on the balance sheet.
  • 03:23 So sometimes if you feel overwhelmed or frustrated and
  • 03:26 you see something you can say, you know what?
  • 03:28 I'm going to go to the chart of accounts and
  • 03:30 I'm either going to rename it to make more sense, or I'm going to hide it, or
  • 03:34 I'm going to add something else so that all of this makes more sense to me.
  • 03:37 All right, in the next video we're going to talk about how to add and
  • 03:41 edit and just modify the names you see on the chart of accounts.

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