Top 5- Year End Reports & Closing the Books

sofiamdc-2341 · ‎December 20, 2023

SA Community templates-65.png

Hello! Welcome back to another Top 5. Are you wondering how to go about performing a month-end close, fixing beginning balance issues, or knowing more about the 1099 transaction detail report? If so then you’ll want to keep reading as I will be covering some of the most asked questions on the topic of Reporting & Closing the Books!

So let’s go through these together.

1. How do I perform a month-end close?

Thanks for asking, let me go ahead and walk you through it!

Here's how to close the books:

Choose the Gear icon and select Company Settings.
Choose Advanced.
In the Accounting section, click on the Edit icon.
Check the box labeled Close the books.
Enter a closing date. Transactions dated on or before the closing date cannot be changed without warning.
Decide what you want users to see if they try to save a transaction that is dated prior to the closing date:

Choose Allow changes after viewing a warning to make a warning message appear.
Choose Allow changes after viewing a warning and entering a password to require the user to enter a password as well. Then enter the password in the fields below.

7. Click Save, then Done.

You’re set!

2. When I run the 1099 Transaction Detail Report for last year, no data populates the report. I can't f...

I’m here to help with your 1099 Transaction Detail Report!

In order to get that list populated, you will need to start the Prepare 1099 process. The reason for this is to assign a form for the Vendors (ie: 1099-NEC, 1099-Misc, etc).

Here’s how you can go about choosing accounts for 1099 tracking and reports:

Select the Expenses tab, then the Vendors section.
Click on Prepare 1099's.
In Step 2 - Accounts, check the option for whichever type of 1099 you're filing.
In the drop-down menu, check off each Ledger Account that holds transactions for your 1099 vendors.

Once you have worked through adding that to the Vendor, you can cancel or exit out of the 1099 wizard, and your report will populate.

3. I want to run a report that shows me all invoices I created in the last month (or any other time per...

Totally! We can pull up the Sales by Customer Detail report. This will show your customers and their transactions.

You’ll want to customize it to show the invoices only. Here's how:

Click Reports.
Go to Sales.
Select Sales by Customer Detail.
Click Customize Report, then go to the Filters tab.
Under FILTER, select Transaction Type.
Under Transaction Type, select Invoice.
Click OK.
Manually change the dates, then click Refresh.

That’s it!

You can memorize the report so you won't go over to the same customization process again. Then, you can find the saved report under Memorized Reports.

4. How do I fix beginning balance issues in QuickBooks Online?

I’m happy to point you in the right direction and help you fix this opening balance concern.

There will be a beginning balance in the system if there are reconciled transactions. If you've created changes to the reconciled entries, this will affect your opening balance. This is the reason you're seeing a negative amount.

In order to fix this, you'll need to undo the reconciliation. After that, go to your bank register and remove the R status of your transactions to zero out the amount.

Here's how:

Go to the Accounting menu.
Select Chart of Accounts.
Find the account holding the transaction. Then select View register.
Select the transaction you want to unreconcile to expand the view.
Review the check column. If the transaction is reconciled, you’ll see an “R.”
Select the checkbox. This changes the letter in the box. Keep selecting it until the box is blank. This removes the transaction from the reconciliation.
Select Save.
Close the account register.

For more details about this process, please see this link: Learn how to unreconcile an individual transaction from a completed reconciliation.

This link also provides complete steps about handling balance issues: Learn what to review so you can start reconciling.

5. Our bank accounts and credit cards are linked to QuickBooks, but none of the transactions were match...

I’m glad you asked!

Closing your books for the year prevents unwanted changes to your accounting data. Before doing so, I recommend reviewing your accounts and making sure the information is accurate.

For the linked accounts, I suggest matching them to the transactions in QuickBooks. It will help ensure your data matches what you have in the actual bank account.

Here's how:

On the left navigation, go to Banking.
Select the bank account.
Go to the For Review tab.
Click the transaction.

5. Choose Find Match.

6. Match with the transaction in QuickBooks.

7. Hit Save.

After matching transactions and making sure everything is in QuickBooks, you can proceed with reconciling your accounts up to your closing date. I recommend downloading the statements from your bank to compare transactions easily during the process.

Also, make some adjustments to your inventory quantity on hand if necessary. Once done, you can close your books directly from the settings of your account.

You'll need an admin access to perform the action. Follow these steps:

Go to Settings ⚙ and then select Accounts and Settings.
Select the Advanced tab.
Select Edit ✎ in the Accounting section.
Select the Close the Books checkbox.
Enter a closing date. Give yourself a comfortable deadline. You shouldn't need to edit any transactions before this date. Your new bookkeeping work will start after this point.
Select the Allow changes after viewing a warning and entering a password option from the drop-down menu if you want to require a password before editing your closed books.
Select Save and then Done.

You should now be set!

For additional resources and help, you can use the following article to make changes to your closed books in QuickBooks: Edit your closed books.

That’s all for today. I hope you found these Top 5 Q & A’s helpful and got some valuable resources out of them. Like always, if you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to ask us here in the Community. Until next time!

Topics

Training

Community

Resources