OK I've spent hours retrospectively entering my 2003-04 accounts from Quicken 5 (yes!) into QB Premier 2004. I first entered the cash book using "write cheques", 300 txs that ensure I have the right balance at the end of year. Most txs I put down to an account "Creditors" (rather than Accounts Payable). I then started to go through and enter the bills against which these payments were masde and soon discovered that thsi was not how QB wanted to work :(
before I start all over again - is there anyway I can easily post journals or somethng to allocate the debit amounts from Creditors to the relevant expense headings as well as clearing the balances in each supplier acocount. Even if I eneterd all the bills as they are now I wouldn't mind as long as there was a way of going into the supplier accounts and netting off the dr/cr items so QB didn't think there were unpaid bills.
Since I am not familiar with the version you use, let me just point you in the right direction. Under Help menu, click Help Index and click historical transactions. The QB guidelines are pretty explicit. Additionally, there should have been a 'getting started' window that would have asked relevant questions and given suggestions as to how to enter and or summarize data.
As to the hours you have already spent-- there is a problem in trying to 'fix' the already entered transactions. While Quicken uses 'categories' in writing checks, QB references 'accounts'. The accounts *appear* similar to categories, but really are not, and there is no way to change multiple transactions from say, account Creditors (an expense account?) to account A/P with vendor name.
If you have the summary information, then certainly you can use the general journal to allocate the expenses properly. There are many variations to using the journal. Have you entered the vendor bills associated with the transactions/payments from the cash book? If so, you can enter individual journal entries for each vendor, debiting accounts payable for the sum total of the payments and crediting account 'Creditors'. This will move the expense from the dummy account you created, and back as a credit to A/P. Then, go to the Pay Bills screen and select each paid bill for that vendor, highlight and use the 'Set Credits' button. (There is a preference for automatically applying credits which may be useful in this situation. See the help screen in the pay bills window for how to do this with your version). If you do this for EACH vendor, and if all the bills are entered with appropriate expense accounts, you *should* have a correct vendor balance, 'Creditors' should end up with a zero balance, and the expenses will be re-allocated.
An alternative to using journal entries (or an adjunct) is to edit the individual transactions you entered to post to the appropriate expense account INSTEAD of the account 'Creditors'. For the transactions you choose to edit this way, you would NOT enter a corresponding bill. This method would be appropriate for expenses that were not billed from the vendor, or were recurring and you have no need for vendor invoice information (IE rent or utilities). You could also use this method for vendors you use infrequently or pay at time of sale.
When finished with the appropriate editing and/or journal entries you should have a balance of zero in the 'Creditors' account you created.
Many thnaks - this is what I've just done - took a EOY summary report of Q5 and posted the allocations as a general journal to put the expenditure under the right headings for the P&L. I think this will get me there (well, almost) for 2003/04 and then I'll start a new file for
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