Item List 14500 limit reached

Hi Carol B,

Thanks for posting on the community again!

I'm afraid that having reached the list limit of 14,500 in QuickBooks desktop your options are limited. The 2 options which have been mentioned to you so far are possibilities, namely...

1) Exporting your company data to QuickBooks online, where there is theoretically no list limit

2) Starting a brand new QuickBooks company file in QuickBooks desktop, with opening balance and creating only customers/suppliers/ items you need at this time

Of course I know you would much rather keep your current company file, and there is a method by which this may be achieved, albeit a pretty manual one.

Your Names, such as Customers/Suppliers/ employees, and items such as Stock items/non stock items cannot be deleted from QuickBooks if there are any transactions relating to them (Which in most cases there are) without deleting these transactions themselves.

But instead, what you can do is find old names/ Items which are no longer used, and change two of them at a time to have the same name E.G changing two not used stock items in the item list to 'unused'. Once you do this on two old records QuickBooks desktop will ask you if you want to merge the two. If you select yes and merge them, you are effectively turning 14,500 items/names to 14,499 items freeing up another one to be created.

I do appreciate the method suggested is manual, and will take time, but it would allow you to keep running your current company file.

If you have any questions on the above, please don't hesitate to post back.

Thanks.

Chris.
 

Hi CarolB,

No need to apologise for asking questions on the community, that's what we're here for! :)

I understand it does sound like a daunting task starting with a brand new file, but don't worry! We will assist you with everything we possibly can to help get you up and running, and moving forward.

Firstly, you are indeed correct. If you were to export your list items from your current desktop file, and then import them into the new desktop file you will be able to delete the list items as you please as there will be no transactions attached. You can also do this for other list items/names such as 'Customers'/ Suppliers.

A Quick way to do this would be the following.

1. In your current desktop company file click 'File,' 'Utilities' 'Export' then 'Lists to IIF files'



2. In the next pane, select what you would like to export E.G, Customers, suppliers, and items.



3. Then on the next pane, give your IIF file a name, and save it somewhere locally on your computer like the desktop.

4. Once you have saved this file, open up your new QuickBooks desktop company file, and click 'File' 'utilities' 'Import' 'IIF files'



5. Choose the IIF file you have saved, and QuickBooks will import your data. As you say, this will make your clean up of items and names far more efficient, as you will be able to delete at will without having to merge.

Entering opening VAT balances

Firstly you are correct, the outstanding VAT liability account balance in your file will be from any potential VAT owed/ reclaimable vat against any open customer or supplier balances.

There is no easy automatic way to do this in QuickBooks Desktop when moving file, but I would advise the below method to be the most thorough.

1. Run supplier and customer balance summary reports in your old QuickBooks file to check the open balances of each.

2. For your customers, create invoices against the relevant ones who have anything outstanding which contains VAT. if you apply the relevant VAT code to these transactions, and you are on a cash basis of VAT, mark them as paid when the customer pays the outstanding balance and they will then populate your return.

3. For your Suppliers, create Bills against the ones who have anything outstanding which contains VAT. if you apply the relevant VAT code to these transactions, and you are on a cash basis of VAT, mark them as paid when you pay the supplier the outstanding balance and they will then populate your return. 

I hope the above helps. Again though, if you have any further questions please don't hesitate to post back.

Thanks!

Chris.

Hi Carol,

Not a problem at all, most happy to help.

The method described would be best used if the balance on the Vat liability account was left as '0.00' upon the beginning of the new file. This way, the liability account will populate upon the creation of the outstanding invoices/ bills (with the relevant VAT code applied) to represent the outstanding potential Output and Input VAT.

You are correct, these would need to be created individually if there are some invoice lines with VAT considerations, and some lines without.

In terms of date, there should be no problem with creating the invoices and bills used to represent the outstanding balances on the original invoice or Bill date, as they will only be applicable to your VAT 100/ return when you mark the outstanding balance as paid.

Thanks,

Chris.