I’ve always been known as someone that can cleanup any sort of mess in QuickBooks Online. I’ve even taught other bookkeepers how to do it. If you don’t know what you are doing, it can be VERY time consuming and at times feel like an impossible feat. Here are some of my tips to make any QuickBooks Online Cleanup project easier.
QuickBooks Online Cleanup Basics
#1 – Always reconcile all of your bank accounts when starting any cleanup. It is important to make sure your books have all of the transactions for the business. You can change how they are classified later.
#2 – If a transaction doesn’t clear a bank or credit card account, move it to a clearing account to house those transactions until you figure out if they are real or not.
#3 – Review the AR Aging Summary Report and look for any negative balances. Investigate and clean up those as needed.
#4 – Run the AP Aging Summary Report and look for negative balances or big overdue balances. You can also confirm with your client if the amounts look appropriate.
#5 – Look out for non-business-related transactions and move those to distributions or a loan payable.
#6 – Review historical transactions in the vendor center to see if your expense coding is consistent.
Identifying and Fixing Duplicate Transactions in QuickBooks Online
#7 – Easily identify duplicates by reviewing the register and visually checking to see if there are transactions that cleared the bank feed with the same amounts as those that have not.
#8 – When dealing with duplicate transactions, if the bank feed didn’t find a match, delete the duplicate transaction that is connected to the bank feed. Then, go back and use “Find Match” to force a match.
#9 – Review the P&L detail for any deposits and check to see if those should have been recorded as invoice payments.
#10 – Identify duplicate invoice payments – They can be (1) sitting in undeposited funds and (2) sitting in the bank (either as a duplicate payment or recorded as a deposit).
#11 – Run the Undeposited Funds detail as of the last day of the month and group by customer to see the undeposited funds balances per customer.
More Transaction Tips for QuickBooks Online Cleanups
#12 – Consider using an Importer or Deleter app to mass import transactions or to get unwanted transactions out of QuickBooks Online.
#13 – If you have an expense and a bill payment that represent the same transaction, you can switch that expense into the bill payment.
#14 – Avoid deleting transactions. Void or zero out when possible, so you can keep the transaction and its history if there is ever a question.
QuickBooks Online Cleanup Tips Just for Accountants
#15 – Remember accountants have the option to Undo bank recs. Sometimes it is faster to just redo those bank reconciliations instead of trying to figure out where things are off.
#16 – Use Reports Options to change the default time period for your reports and see the most recent bank rec status of your accounts.
#17 – Reclassify transactions allows you to mass edit transactions by account or class. (If they are item based, consider updating the mapping on the product/service code instead.)
#18 – When you are ever unsure of a transaction, communicate with the client. Providing them with reports of items you have questions is better than making a wrong assumption.
If you need help with a QuickBooks Online cleanup project, contact me. I’m ready to help!!