Along with Q/B I keep books by hand. In Q/B there is an account A/R-A with a large balance. (Don't know where it came from). How can I delete this account or is it going to be there forever? I'm new to Q/B. Except for this, so far so good.
A/R means that this is an accounts receivable account. When you create an invoice, the amount of the invoice is applied to an A/R account. The best thing to do is to use the menu banking/use register and select this A/R-A account. You can see what is in this account.
The way it should work is that when you create an invoice, the A/R account selected increases by the amount of the invoice. WHen you receive payment and apply the payment to the invoice, the selected A/R account is reduced by the payment.
By the way you can never delete an account from QB if that account has any transactions. You can make it inactive. Go to lists/chart of account to see a list of your accounts.
You should only have the balance owed showing. If you have a huge balance that exceeds what is actually due to you, the perhaps the payments have not been applied to invoices.
I hope that you will eventually stop keeping books by hand. If you use all the QB functions, it will be faster and safer.
I have seen clients books where an accountant told them to make a lump sum journal entry to "correct" the AR account to the By Hand AR ledger.
This does not clean up the AR Account, but makes the balance sheet and/or Sales "come out" for the tax return. If there are a large number of entries it is very time consuming to correct each balance.
You may need to contact a Quick Books Expert for help. Or read more about Journal Entries to an Accounts Receivable account.
