I have a chart of accounts for company. How do create a brand new business as a self employed person?

Hi @mountainswest244  welcome to the community ,we're always here to help.

I understand how important it is to setup the right accounts for your business. Here is an article that will provide guideline Article . If you need further assistance or clarification feel free to reach out again and we'll be more than happy to help. Have a wonderful evening!

Hi Sophia

I am sorry to say, that article did not address the issue.  Let me clarify further:

I corporate chart of accounts has a retained earnings account which you cannot remove because it is an integral part of a companies books.  I self-employed persons books has an "owners equity" account which is integral to that type of business.  

Therefore i CANNOT "change my corporate chart of accounts over to self employed.  Therefore I need to start over and initiate a self employed style of accounting.  How do I that?

@mountainswest244 

Are you using QBSE or QBO?

https://quickbooks.grsm.io/Canada

https://quickbooks.grsm.io/CFIB

I am using QBO

What is the difference between these two?

Hello mountainswest244,

I'd be happy to touch on and clarify what's been mentioned so far in this thread. I appreciate where you're coming from on this, and I know it can be a challenge to take one type of company's chart of accounts setup and make it your own. I'm here to point you in the right direction.

I'll start first with differentiating between QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Self-Employed. QuickBooks Online is intended for small business owners and provides a wide variety of features to help with the management of those kinds of books, including a section where you can manage a chart of accounts. QuickBooks Self-Employed is a more basic version of the software that's geared toward folks working for themselves who want to track income and expenses for their work. It doesn't have a chart of accounts option, so if that's important to you, QuickBooks Online may be the one you want to stick with. To explore this in more detail, check out this page: All QuickBooks Products

As for your question about the chart of accounts, I can share this article with you about the chart of accounts—Learn about the chart of accounts in QuickBooks—which goes over how to add to the chart of accounts, how to edit the chart of accounts, and more. In terms of learning exactly what accounts you need in your chart of accounts and how to set them up, I recommend working with an accountant.

An accountant would be particularly great here as they'll be able to help you learn which version of QuickBooks would be best and how to manage your books. If you stick with QuickBooks Online, you can even add an accountant as a user right in your books by navigating to the My Accountant tab. There, you can add someone you're already working with or take advantage of the Find a pro to help button to research QuickBooks-savvy accountants near you.

I hope this has helped shed some light on how you can go about working with the program. Feel free to reply to this thread again if you have additional questions.

Have a great week!