When I view Account History in Chart Of Accounts transactions show as Increase/Decrease. Also credit balance liabilities show as positive. How to have it as debit/credit

When I view Account History in Chart Of Accounts all of the transactions show in columns under Increases/Decreases. How do I instead have it read as debits/credits?

For example, a shareholder loan account that I've lent money to the company. This should show as a credit transaction to the shareholder account and a negative balance. However, in Quickbooks, it comes in as an "increase" and also a positive balance in the account history.

Hello howie2,

It's great to have you join us again. I appreciate how QuickBooks Online's setup and terminology could be confusing. I'll work through this with you.

What terminology you're seeing in the account registers depends on what type of account you've got pulled up. For instance, some accounts will have terms such as charge/credit and payment or payment and deposit. A liability account uses the terms increase and decrease as you're noticing. At this time, there isn't a way to change those terms or input your own. I recommend you leave feedback about this through the Gear icon in your account.

Secondly, I hear what you're saying about the loan account and see how this could be counterintuitive. For these kinds of accounts, including credit cards, the amount will show as positive when there's money owed. A negative amount would mean there's been an overpayment to what's owed.

The increase in this case is an increase in the amount owed. The decrease means you owe less because you've made a payment. If you've set up the loan using steps such as those outlined in the following article, you should be good to go: Record a loan and its payment

We always love hearing feedback from our customers so we can continue to enhance QuickBooks Online and what it does for users like you.

I'm here should you need anything else!

Yet another pleasantly tone deaf and clueless response from QB CS.  I can't get over how many answers completely ignore the question in these forums.  If I asked why the sky was blue, no doubt QB would respond that they like rainbows, too.  Quickbooks used to be the preeminent software for small business accounting, but the subscription model has taken it well outside an Accounting software and more into a small business tracker.  As the CS person refuses to acknowledge, double entry accounting dictates that money owed/liabilities = CREDITS!  NEGATIVE BALANCES!  If they want to have a balance sheet report that restates them using their logic, fine, but a GL activity report should be as-booked (credits shown as negative, etc).  QB has made some sort of marketing calculation that assumes users don't/can't understand DE accounting.  There needs to be an 'accountant' view that properly states activity and balances as credits and debits, based on how I've journaled them, not how QB wants to oversimplify them. Yet another complaint on a growing list

I absolutely agree with you . As a retired CA I would appreciate transactions expressed as Debits and credits. I certainly can painfully grind through the mentality that assets are plus and liabilities are minuses but what a pain!

Hi rick82,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I can definitely see how being used to certain labels when working with account registers and then suddenly working with different labels can take some getting used to. The best way to share this kind of feedback is by following the steps in this article: How do I submit feedback?

When you use that tool, the comments are forwarded to our product development team so they can learn the different things they can consider to make using QuickBooks Online even easier. Don't hesitate to share your thoughts!

Wishing you the best.

I completely agree. It's absolutely ridiculous that we can't get normal accounting verbage from what is supposed to be an accounting program.

I just started using QB and the increase/decrease is very confusing after years of using debit/credits and knowing exactly what that means; it's like speaking a different language.

Hi kisselmartinllc,

Thank you for providing your feedback, and welcome to the QuickBooks family. I can appreciate where you're coming from. Sometimes there's a learning curve when starting something new. QuickBooks Online tries to keep it simple for everyone. I'd like to point you to my colleague's Post further up in this thread.

LauraAB goes into detail on how the program works and how to input feedback. Keep in mind that QuickBooks knows that your Asset accounts are debit accounts and Liability and Equity accounts are credit accounts and create your entries for you. 

We do recognize the importance of input from those that use the program. Your input allows our product development team to know what's working and what can be improved.

If you have any questions regarding the program I'd be happy to answer them. Have a good day!

I can see Quickbooks will not all classic accounting theory to be used as an option..Asking a trained accountant to use plus and minus terminology instead of debits and credits is like forcing  a mechanic to say " lefty loosie. , righty tighty "  when wotking with nuts and bolts.

This is an incredibly tone-deaf and condescending response.  "Sometimes there's a learning curve to learning something new"?!?!!?? Really?!!?  Why on earth should an accounting program require its users to be required to learn a new, non-standard method of doing something?   Accounts should all be Debit Credit - full stop.  There are generally accepted accounting practices for a reason.   At the very least, if you want to keep that ridiculous increase / decrease labeling, offer a toggle that allows user to switch back and forth.

Hello there. Your feedback on this thread is valuable and I'd like to make sure it gets into the right hands. I encourage you to send feedback about this to our engineers. You can do this by clicking the Gear icon and looking for Feedback. I'll be one message away in case you have further questions. Otherwise, I wish you a great rest of the week. 

I'd really like to stop seeing suggestions from QuickBooks support telling us to send customer feedback when we have done that many times. QuickBooks being an accounting software or at least it was supposed to be originally, should have the option to use proper accounting terminology. Accountants are asking for QuickBooks to make these changes and QuickBooks seems to be ignoring us. This is exactly why I hear many CPAs tell me they don't even use QuickBooks because of the terrible accounting software.

I have already done that as have many other accountants, but I suppose we're not being listened to.

Hi knewk227,

I can see where you're coming from, and I get that anyone familiar with debits and credits would rather see what they know. QuickBooks has tried to make the program easy enough for people with no accounting background to use. Support asks you to provide feedback because those suggestions go to the program developers, the people who make the changes to the program. We also pass along the feedback we receive. QuickBooks is constantly evolving and changing. The updates that happen are based on what the product development teams think is the greatest need based on the responses from users like you. So, thank you for providing feedback.

I'm also super annoyed by this.  And was hoping there was a way to update the view.  Reading the comments it appears that this issue is not getting any traction.  If you are trying to make it easier for people who don't know the difference between debits and credits, then WHY would you have the words debits and credits on the journal entry?  Oh yeah because that's how you adjust the accounts by debits and credits.  ALSO anyone without accounting background is NOT going to know how to enter a basic journal entry to impact the accounts in the way they desire since the journal is laid out as debits and credits and the GL is listed as Increase and Decrease or Payment and Deposit.  This is silly and at the very least if you want to dumb it down, then put both words in the header. 

Example on a cash account:    Payment/Debit       Deposit/Credit

Example on an asset account: Decrease/Debit      Increate/Credit

As you look at this thread, and the lame response from QB, essentially, the answer is "no."

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@howie2 wrote:

When I view Account History in Chart Of Accounts all of the transactions show in columns under Increases/Decreases. How do I instead have it read as debits/credits?

 

For example, a shareholder loan account that I've lent money to the company. This should show as a credit transaction to the shareholder account and a negative balance. However, in Quickbooks, it comes in as an "increase" and also a positive balance in the account history.

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