Minor Annoyance - Part 2

I now have two separate accounts of type "accounts payable":

Nether is a sub-account

But when I click on Vendor | Enter Bills, the default account comes up as 2015. I hunted around in Edit | Preferences and Help but couldn't find anything about setting defaults.

Did I miss something? Yep. For one thing, you failed to mention your version of QuickBooks. I am currently using a 2003 version. In QB 2003, there is no drop-down box for account anywhere on the pay bills screen. If you *are* seeing a default account, perhaps this is a new capability?

If the 'default' account you are seeing appears after you enter the vendor name and start to enter the bill, then it may be a problem with the settings for QB recall options. Open the "Edit ==> Preferences" window and select General. In the My Preferences tab, look to see if you have checked the box to Automatically recall last transaction for this name. If it has been checked, then the 2015 account is coming up because the last transaction entered for the vendor used that account. Saving a new bill using the 2010 account should solve the problem, as QB recalls the most recent transaction.

1. OP wrote about entering bills, not paying bills.

1. There **IS** a drop-down menu for A/P account both when entering bills and paying bills, but only if you have more than one A/P account. I haven't used a Basic edition in several years, but this feature has certainly existed in Pro and Premier editions since long before 2003.

2. Your suggestion about "....recall last transaction" might solve the user's problem. Something else to try - Open the Chart of Accounts and ensure that the preferred account is listed before any other A/P accounts.

You can select default bank accounts for specific transaction types, but I'm not aware of any other account types for which you can select a default. It's relatively rare for small businesses to use multiple A/P (or A/R) accounts, so the ability to specify a default for such accounts is not a high-demand feature and can usually be satisfied either by numbering/naming the account so that it precedes other accounts of the same type, or by using the "....recall last transaction" feature, or by the "most recently used" ("MRU") rule.

"L" wrote ... Yep. For one thing, you failed to mention your version of QuickBooks. I am currently using a 2003 version. In QB 2003, there is no drop-down box for account anywhere on the pay bills screen. If you *are* seeing a default account, perhaps this is a new capability?

If the 'default' account you are seeing appears after you enter the vendor name and start to enter the bill, then it may be a problem with the settings for QB recall options. Open the "Edit ==> Preferences" window and select General. In the My Preferences tab, look to see if you have checked the box to Automatically recall last transaction for this name. If it has been checked, then the 2015 account is coming up because the last transaction entered for the vendor used that account. Saving a new bill using the 2010 account should solve the problem, as QB recalls the most recent transaction.

Nether is a sub-account

But when I click on Vendor | Enter Bills, the default account comes up as 2015. I hunted around in Edit | Preferences and Help but couldn't find anything about setting defaults.

Did I miss something?

Yup yup. It was the enter bills screen I was looking at. Definate typo in my reply. There are, of course, references to accounts available to use on the pay bills screen.

Ahh. I have only one A/P account, so I do not see this. I would have thought there would have been an account listed in either case, showing only one selection available if you had only one A/P account (no drop down).

Using Premier Contractor edition, myself.

I thought about suggesting the OP re-sort the account list, but evidentally the thought was too fleeting In any event, in addition to the fact that the OP listed the accounts in the desired numerical order, it had also occured to me that the account names also sort to the desired account "on top". Having QB place the 2015 Accrued reimbursable account preceding the 2010 Accounts payable account seemed unlikely.

Yes, it seems it is down to using the QB recall preference and/or re-sorting the accounts as the only solutions to the OP's 'minor annoyance'.