Linda Artesani shows how to clean up QuickBooks Online after converting from Desktop, including removing billable expenses and deactivating old accounts. She explains that inactive accounts can block the cleanup process, so you need to reactivate them first, then deactivate them again after removing expenses.
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Hello, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. I have a short video today to go over if you've recently converted your file from desktop to QuickBooks Online. There's a little bit of housekeeping that should be done before you convert. Primarily, I recommend creating a portable file for your desktop file and then restoring that portable to an actual data file. And then converting that because when you make a portable, it actually repurposes the file in a more orderly fashion. So then you open it up and you didn't realize that you had a bunch of billable expenses and it kind of slows up your online program and you want to remove them. They're not anything you'll ever bill out and you just want to remove them. So I just had this happen with a client, customer. And it's a very simple process and I'll provide you the URL. I'm just going to paste this specific URL in the browser line where her name of her company is. So I logged into her company file and now I'm going to put this browser line in, which is Manage Billable Expenses QuickBooks. So I put that in and it's going to come into the screen and it's going to say you want to hide them. And I do. I want to get them off and I'm going to pick a date. She actually wants them all removed. It depends. Maybe you want to do them up to like the last fiscal period and keep the more current ones. It really depends. So I'm just going to click Save here. One side note as this is processing, and it takes a lot of time if you have a pretty good-sized file or a lot of billable expenses. If you've used some files, some accounts in the past that maybe you've made inactive, maybe you had a purchases account and then you change it to be something else. And made it inactive, and you're using maybe supplies and materials instead of purchases. If you have that happening, I recommend going into your chart of accounts and just reactivating all those inactive accounts so that you won't get stuck. And now that's all done, it's processed. That's how quick it is. She had some accounts that needed to be reactivated, and I'll just go back in here. It can even be a bank account, so I'm just going to go back in here and just You know, remove them again, make them inactive. She didn't have many of them, but I want to go through. There were a few, and I'll just come back down here and, you know, start to remove some of the ones that she doesn't use. I think this was one of them. It might not be. We'll see if it's the default. So I'm just going to come in and clean it back up and put it back where it was. But now she'll be able to go into her list. When she asked me to remove a client that's no longer active, I couldn't do it because the person had billable expenses. So now I can make that person inactive, and that was what was hindering her from cleaning up her list. So again, really simple process. I'll provide you with the link so you can do it on your own file. First step is to come back into your chart of accounts and just start to— I just viewed over here, and anywhere I saw Make Active, I made them active. And then I just made sure I wrote— made a note of it. I just took a screenshot so I can come back in here and then make them inactive again when I'm done. That's the only really cleanup step, but it was really quick and easy, and now I can clean up her list for her and shrink it down, her customer list. So it's that simple. I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't, please reach out to me. I'd love to help you with QuickBooks Online. Thank you for watching the video. Bye now.
