Hi all,

I just started using Quickbooks online and started by going through the chart of accounts, and making any irrelevant accounts inactive (it is a relatively smaller art business, so a lot of the accounts are completely unnecessary). I understand how to create sub accounts and how they interact with each other, but my issue is when I turn to generating a Profit and Loss statement.

I have not yet input any account balances, but wanted to see how my Chart of Accounts set up looks on a P&L so I could find out if there are any errors I made. The frustrating part is since every account has 0$, nothing shows on the P&L. I found out online how to show every account no matter the balance, but it also includes every single account I made inactive with "*Account Name* (deleted)". I obviously dont want to see these accounts, hence why I made them inactive. (Yes I know you can export into excel and delete them, but then why would I even use Quickbooks in the first place). I just want to see all "Active accounts" even if they have zero balance

Second, I am unable to make certain accounts inactive due to them being "apart of the online banking feature", or another one says I cannot delete because "it is being used by a product or service". To my knowledge, I have not linked anything to a product or service as I have only deleted and or changed account names in the COA.

Third, My profit and loss statement has a subtotal for nearly every category. for example, I have "business meals" as one whole account, and my P&L includes "total business meals". the same goes for employee benefits, travel, rent, office expenses, advertising. Basically most of these simply do not need to be subtotaled as it just makes the whole P&L more complicated and harder to read. I also prefer not to make these edits in excel, as I said earlier why would I want quickbooks in the first place if I can only customize my statements in excel.

I apologize if this is lengthy, but it seems as if quickbooks is not very intuitive and many edits have to be made in excel afterwards.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Thank you