Journal entries, payroll, and other entries not showing in Chart of Account balances, nothing balances! Help!

That was a (not so to the user) helpful advertisement. 

It was NOT a compliment ... 

I agree....it's too easy to answer with "spend money to hire a pro".

I truly do hope you have figured out your problem, but in my many years of experience I find that when people say they have figured it out, what they mean is they have figured out a way around their problem, not necessarily the correct way, causing many hours of frustration at year end for both them and their accountant. I am not saying this is your situation, I am just saying in general.

When you say " for some reason that I do not understand" and " there seems to be alot of very quirky things like this in QuickBooks", these are the things that a couple of hours with a ProAdvisor could  help you figure out make your life alot easier. Having said that, you are right, the help is quite good and if you have the time and the committment to do a proper job I am sure you will be successful.

I discovered that as well, but thanks for the additional tip to add it to my bar!  

It still would be interesting to know why the chart of accounts doesn't show p/l balances?   What's that about?

Because it is just a Chart of Accounts, not a report.

Why Intuit shows Balance Sheet balances, I'm not sure.  I wish they didn't as it does confuse new users.

Any particular reason why you suggest this?  

I just purchased a franchise.   I get daily sales journals from the POS that show my daily sales (cash, debit, credit transactions), HST, cash float adjustments, coupons, gift certificates bough/redeemed, etc.

If I separate out the deposits to the bank account, it might make balancing even more difficult.

Similarly, I get an auto-withdrawal from the franchisor which includes my inventory charges, rent, royalties, marketing charges, etc.    It seems easier to do this by JE than by writing cheques.    

Unless there is a good reason why, of course.....that I've missed.    Thanks in advance!

I've got a Second Cup franchise as a client & it's the same sort of paperwork.

I recommend memorizing a sales receipt with zero values for all your sales & receipts.  Have it automatically enter daily.  (It takes a little time to build your item list, but it's awesome having daily sales receipts ready to have the numbers posted.  It goes really fast.)

Then you can go to each day's receipt and post your transactions. The balance of your sales receipts should be zero and your category sales and all your receipts will be entered.  (Make sure your credit card receipts match your daily summary, the pos depends on staff accuracy.)

Your deposits will go to undeposited funds.  You'll wait for a bank statement, or download a week's worth & do the deposits per the actual bank.  Collect the appropriate receipts for each deposit.  In the end, balancing should be easier.

When you get your printout for the royalties etc., you would post a cheque and split it into the appropriate GLs there.  Make sure you include your HST.  When you are more used to writing cheques it should be easier than the JE & offers less chance for error.

Kate

Thanks so much for the tips!   

Uum!   Dumb question...how do a memorize a sales receipt.   I haven't looked at this part of QB's yet as I didn't think it would apply.    I also like the idea of moving deposits to undeposited funds because I don't do daily bank deposits.    This will make reconciliation easier, I think.  

I also did not realize that I could "write" cheques without actually issuing a cheque number.   Good to know, and I agree better than JE's. 

Make a sales receipt  (all your categories, in the same order as your pos printout.  I usually end with over/short. Leave the amounts as zero.).  Go to Edit>Memorize & memorize it. 

Choose "Daily" and "Automatically Enter".  Now every time you open quickbooks it will add a blank sales receipt for each day.  (You can also add them by going to lists>memorized transactions.)  I usually drill down into my income category on the trial balance to get to the first un-posted one.

Do your deposits each week (or more if you need) - your 'payments' window gets a little busy if you wait a whole month.

Kate