In QuickBooks Online, inactive or deleted accounts can appear on your financial reports. This happens if a report pulls data of the transactions posted to the account while it was still active.
In this article, you'll learn how to:
- Temporarily remove deleted accounts from reports
- Completely remove deleted accounts from reports
- Make an account active again
- Merge the account
- Delete or move the transactions
Temporarily remove deleted accounts from reports
| Reminders | This report option removes all active and deleted zero-balance accounts. |
- Open the financial report you are working on, for example, Profit and Loss report, then select Customize at the top left.
- Scroll down to Rows/Columns, then set Show non-zero or active only to Non-zero.
- Select Run report.
Completely remove deleted accounts from reports
To remove an inactive account from reports, you must make the account active first, then merge, move, or delete it.
Make an account active again
- Go to Settings ⚙ and select Chart of accounts (Take me there).
- At the top of the Chart of Accounts window, select the small Gear icon then mark Include inactive.
- Find the account you want to reactivate, then select Make active.
Note: The account will now appear in the Chart of Accounts window. You can now either merge the unwanted account with another one, or move the transactions to another account, then Delete.
Merge the account
You can merge the account into another account by changing its name to exactly match the name of the target account.
- Look for the account you just made active. From the dropdown arrow in the Action column, select Edit.
- Update the account name.
Note: The new account name must be exactly the same as the account you are merging it with. - Select Save and Close, then Yes when you get the prompt asking if you want to merge the account.
Delete or move the transactions
If you would rather change the transactions in the account and then delete it:
- Look for the account you just made active. In the Action column, select Run report.
- The Accounts QuickReport opens. Customize the Account QuickReport to All Dates, then select Run report.
- Select each transaction, then either delete it or move it to a different account.
Note: QuickBooks Online has auto-generated accounts that cannot be deleted. For more details, see How to manage default and special accounts in the Chart of Accounts.