"no accnt" item in trial balance

I am using QuickBooks Premier, 2006 Contractor Edition, to keep the books for a small contracting company.

The trial balance shows an item under "no accnt" of $154 and the balance sheet is out of balance by this same amount.

I have gone through the routine in QuickBooks Knowledge Base 107815 to fix a "balance sheet out of balance" condition and determined that this condition occurred on January 8, but the Custom Transaction Detail Report shows zero imbalance for that date. It also shows an inventory adjustment made on that date which matches the dollar amount of the imbalance.

It may be helpful to know that We originally planned to track inventory in QuickBooks, but after we had entered dozens of inventory items we decided not to track inventory after all. Rather than reenter all that data, we exported the item list to Excel, made the changes required to make all of them non-inventory there, imported the list back to QB, and turned off the inventory option. This, however, happened well after the January 8 date when the imbalance appeared.

I have tried turning the inventory option back on and then reversing the inventory adjustment, but I get an error message saying that one of the items has no account associated with it. However, the item list shows no such problem.

I'm not as interested in knowing how this happened as I am in getting rid of the imbalance. It looks bad for the balance sheet to be out of balance, even though the amount is trivial compared to, for instance, total sales. Any help I can get would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Craig

Reply to
Craig
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You have 4 options:

1) Load your Jan 7 backup, fix the problem with the excel sheet that caused it and reenter everything to today.

2) Find the error in the excel sheet and create an excel sheet with the opposite of the error and import.

3) Locate the transaction(s) and edit them supplying them with an account.

4) Learn to live with crappy software that permits this and balance sheets that are always out of balance if inventory has ever been on.

Okay, if you have daily backups, go load say Jan 7 (under a different name) and see if the balance sheet is actually correct. Now load up the Jan 8 backup (under a different name) and see if it is out of whack by the $154. If so using that Jan 8 backup and its audit trail you should easily be able to spot the offending transaction(s). Once located fixing them shouldn't be a problem. And once you know the fix works you can do it on your main file.

Gem of knowledge, if this is a problem that is related to a write down of an invoice for bad debit with inventory items on it and a cash basis balance sheet it will be out of balance because that is the way QuickBooks works. See item 4.

Gem of knowledge, there is a reason to make daily backups. Fixing errors in the data entry that don't come to light until months later is a big one! Never mind the obvious one of a hard drive crash. (Former salt mines in Utah are your friends.)

Reply to
Golden California Girls

Thanks for the help. I'll try your suggestions. The problem seems to be related to an inventory adjustment we made on January 8. I have examined the Excel file we used but couldn't find a problem with it. All the items QB claims have no accounts associated with them appear to have all the accounts they should have. I may have to admit defeat and call QB support, but it's obviously well beyond the thirty day free support period, and my experience with for-pay tech support in other contexts has not been encouraging.

Thanks aga> Craig wrote:

Reply to
Craig

Thanks for the help. I'll try your suggestions. The problem seems to be related to an inventory adjustment we made on January 8. I have examined the Excel file we used but couldn't find a problem with it. All the items QB claims have no accounts associated with them appear to have all the accounts they should have. I may have to admit defeat and call QB support, but it's obviously well beyond the thirty day free support period, and my experience with for-pay tech support in other contexts has not been encouraging.

Thanks aga> Craig wrote:

Reply to
Craig

Is there some chance on the inventory adjustment you didn't have the account to get the adjustment set? Not sure what you pulled in with the Excel file, but in iff form it might be possible to trick QB into making what in effect is a single ended entry. It shouldn't be but I don't know how much data validation they do on imports.

For a little more help -- and because it always is useful as a study aid

-- what was the reversing inventory adjustment you were attempting to do. What should it look like as a journal entry? e.g. debit inventory and credit?

I also realized there is another way to reverse it all. You can go find all the vendor transactions that put things into inventory (bills, checks) and edit them to items that don't put things in inventory. Then you will need to do the same with all the invoices and sales orders. Not pretty from an audit stance changing all the transactions, but it will work. Keep copious notes if you decide this is better than several calls to India. Actually I'd suggest a certified adviser rather than India as I suspect this is going to turn out to be more an accounting question than a software question.

Finally are all the inventory adjustment transactions bad, or just a few of them? If only some, what is different about those than the others? (Something a stupid as two purchases of the item at different prices could be your key.)

Gary

Reply to
Golden California Girls

We started using QB Jan 1, 2006, to coincide with incorporation. The company had been a proprietorship before that, so there was some financial baggage and the accounting had been done by hand, and not necessarily to GAAS (I didn't do it). The semi-helpful book that came with the software suggested not using the "initial quantity" option when setting up inventory items, so we started with zero quantities and adjusted according to what was in physical inventory. I debited the inventory asset account for each item and credited capital, reasoning that from the corporation standpoint, those items represented assets contributed by the proprietor when he incorporated (I'm not a trained accountant; apparently I know just enough to be dangerous). We only did this with two or so items, because it quickly became obvious that it was going to be more trouble than tracking the small amount of inventory we had was worth. I think both the items are in the "no accnt" account.

When importing the item list from Excel, I compared the formats for inventory and noninventory items and made sure that each inventory item we changed to noninventory had the correct noninventory format and the right accounts associated with it. I agree that it is possible we could have somehow caused a single entry transaction in this process, but I have checked the Excel file we used and couldn't find any problems.

It's also possible that when we switched from inventory to noninventory an account was no longer used that balanced one that was kept. Since double entry is essentially hardwired into QB, I think I would have to somehow make another single entry transaction to wipe out the earlier one. I don't see any way to make another double entry that will zero out the $154 balance in "no accnt." If I could hack into where QB keeps the data for individual accounts maybe I could find "no accnt" and wipe it out.

Another possibility, which would be tedious, might be to start over with a fresh company file and put the data in by exporting/importing each account through Excel, but I don't know if this can be done with all of them.

Maybe I can find a QB consultant in my area. No disrespect meant toward our Indian brothers, but I suspect this goes beyond the capability of the average telephone tech support person. My experience in other contexts is that, like me, some of them know just enough to be dangerous.

Thanks again for your time and help. If it's of any interest, I'll post the fix if I find one.

Craig

Golden California Girls wrote:

Reply to
Craig

Reply to
Golden California Girls

Since you don't know what the "No Acct" account is, but you know the other side of the entry, why not just delete the transaction for which you can find the known side of the $154 entry. It's possible this will get rid of the 'No Acct' account.

Then, for accuracy, record the variance on the books via Journal Entry:

- DR: $154 (Miscellaneous Expenses)

- CR: $154 (Retained Earnings)

Or, vice versa, depending on what whether the Balance Sheet variance is positive or negative.

Reply to
TomP

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