Incorrect.

I own an accounting firm and I make tons of journal entries every single day. What prompted the search that led me here is that I have a client who takes refundable retainers against financial deliverables (when he consults on the deliverable, but the "deal" doesn't come to fruition, he refunds part of the fee, and that part is held in escrow -- and recorded in a liability account -- until satisfaction). When the deliverable is realized, he "earns" the retainer (debit liability account, credit income) and if he fails to produce a deliverable, he returns it (debit liability, credit cash).

There is no way to do this (and about a million other things) with the standard workflows like "bills" and "invoices" found in QuickBooks. This isn't some limitation of the software or a hack; journal entries are the basis of all accounting. Those "modules" you use (like when you press the "expense" button) are just a way to hide the journal entry the accounting software is making in the background!

Every single day accountants all over the world make millions of journal entries. Without them your books would not be correct, unless you're running the most simple of businesses.

This thread is about how journal entries don't work in a fundamental way in QuickBooks Online. I don't have the time or inclination to export a report to Excel and manually enter the account name: the software should be producing sensible reports becuase we pay for it. This isn't some "nice to have" add-on. It's not a feature request. This is basic functionality one should expect from any accounting software.

The most lame accounting software from (sorry Linux) GNUCash to Wave even does this correctly for goodness sakes. Get it together, QuickBooks: this is embarassing. 🤦‍

Thank you very much for explaining this to me, there are lot more I am finding difficult even basis functions.

After spending over an hour monkeying around in quick books trying to get a report that pulls in transactions including JE's with names, I came across this thread.  It is absolutely ridiculous that this functionality does not exist and extremely annoying that it hasn't been corrected after 5 years of suggestions.  Even more annoying is for someone to suggest exporting to excel and creating a spreadsheet.   That is like telling someone who bought a new car that they might be expected to push it for the last mile of their commute each day....not acceptable.....and reccommending customers (for 5 years!!)  to send in a suggestion to the Intuit team to add this feature seems beyond the pale.

I agree with this.

The person who wrote the initial answer must not use any source data systems.  If Quickbooks ever wants to compete with better products truly, this is a feature that should be corrected.  

I was looking at this thread dating back to 2018 and I find it still unbelievable that QBO hasn't fixed this problem. This isn't an issue in the desktop version. So annoying especially when I'm doing year end journal entries and some are tied to a name. As an accountant I must say the desktop version is way better for reporting.

There are Quickbooks integrations from very commonly adopted applications like Gusto Payroll that are failing to adequately track Payroll data because the NAME field in journal entries doesn't map properly to Owner or Contractor records. 

We paid a contractor throughout 2023 using Gusto, which syncs the payroll data to QBO via journal entry.  I went to that contractors Contractor record in QBO, checked the Payments tab and there were ZERO Gusto payments tracked there for 1099 purposes.  I went into EVERY journal record for that contractor and manually selected the Contractor Name within the Journal Entry Name field only to discover that this action, too, has no effect on getting the payments linked properly to the contractor record in QBO.  

How is the Gusto integration supposed to work if they can't rely on Journal Entries for tracking contractor payments properly for 1099 purposes?  

How can I modify the 2023 Journal Entries for this contractor so that all payments show up in the Contractor record.  The payments all track properly to the Expense Category (by way of the Journal Entry data fields) so why can't the Contractor Name be mapped successfully as well.  Seems like basic fuctionailty and it's mind-boggling the Quickbooks can't address and resolve this simple issue.

Desktop is better than QBOnline in many areas, but this naming issue is a problem in both.  Thank god, transactions from a JE and the name per line item show up on the PnL Summary and Detail.  But those transactions don't show up associated with the name in the "Vendor Center" nor on reports like "Transaction List by Vendor." 

That Names from JEs can show up in some reports and not others seems to indicate that the transaction architecture is okay. If this is true, Intuit just needs to fix reports like "Transaction List by Vendor" and others to include transactions from JEs and probably some minor fix for the Vendor Center.

Can this really not be fixed?  It seems so simple with the smallest amount of database architecture knowledge.

This naming issue is a problem in both desktop and online.  Names from transactions entered via JEs show up in PnL summary and detail reports (thank god).  But not in reports like "transaction list by vendor" nor in the Vendor Center's list of transactions by vendor name.  I'm writting about Desktop at this time.

That the transaction with a name can show up in one report and not others seems to indicate that the transaction architecture is okay/intact, and that correcting the data reporting problem should be a simple act of updating the design of reports like "transaction list by vendor." A simple fix to the Vendor Center is probably easy too.

Can a developer at Intuit just fix this, please

I agree 100%.  Intuit makes multiple "upgrades" without really any interaction with their customers.  As I have, you will find many blogs and comments asking for a fix to this issue as far back as six years ago.

I am not impressed with this software and even less so with what is called "Customer Service".

I value your feedback, debc4 and bcronkhite. 

As mentioned by my colleagues, the name entered in the journal entry is meant for a specific line item and won't appear on the reports since it doesn't represent the transaction.

If you wish to see the name linked to the journal entry, double-click on the transaction to open it. Alternatively, you may export the report to Excel, so you can enter the names manually from there.

While we're unable to show the names in the journal entry, I recommend sending your feedback to our software engineers. This way, they can review your suggestion and may consider it in our next product enhancements. To do that:

1. Go to Help and select Send Feedback Online.
2. Click Product Suggestion.
3. Enter your feature request and select Send Feedback.

Moreover, running sales reports in QBDT is a breeze for monitoring and tracking your income. You can also customize them to focus on the data that matters most to your business.

Please know I'm always a click away if you require additional help when it comes to journal entries. Just mention my name, and I'll be there right away to attend to your needs. Have a fantastic day ahead, Brian!

Thank you for replying; however, the JE does describe the transaction, especially when importing mass information from other sources.  

While I use spreadsheets daily, having to redownload information into a spreadsheet is extremely inconvenient. I have used many software platforms in the past and this has not been an issue. I am perplexed why it is such an issue for Intuit?  

My organization cannot run these reports in Quickbooks Online, giving us accurate information since the names are not picked up with the Journal Entry.  The Journal Entry represents revenue from other sources we do not bill out through QBO.  It makes the process cumbersome.  

The naming issue is not a problem in QuickBooks Desktop. However, if you enter a name in the customer:name field on expense transactions you need to add the SOURCE NAME field to get the name of the vendor, otherwise you will see the customer name in the name field because of job costing.

The best workaround I could think for your situations would be to setup the liability as an accounts payable account. I know you would then have the customer name in customers and vendors, however, you can have MORE THAN 1 A/R or A/P line in a transaction in online where we could not do this in desktop.

This might resolve the naming issues and even allow for a subsidiary report to keep track.

One good reason, I believe this is not allowed.  It is to stop smaller business from creating an effective purchase ledger control when only recording a small amount of purchases.  The increase in intuit fees to gain a purchase ledger control function does not warrant it when only processing a few purchases a month.  It is shameful that the purchase ledger control is not available for entry level and that introducing one via journal entries, the old fashioned way, is penalised by preventing helpful information from showing on the General Ledger and elsewhere.  Please QB correct this and look after your smaller customers if you want them to grow with you!!!!

Thank you. 

Hi JaeAnnC

This explanation does not make sense.  The fact that each line of a journal entry appears separately in the general ledger report would suggest that the Name designation for the line item is specific to that line in the general ledger.  There is no logical reason it shouldn't appear on those reports.

I too just encountered this and was shocked to see QBO staff ask us to export to Excel and reenter the name on the spreadsheet.  I already entered the name when I created the JE.  The only way to see what name is associated with that JE is to reopen the JE and view it.  Way too time consuming and very poor design for an app that costs over $200/mo.

This seems like a joke. 

I know accounting. i studied it but never did it. Bookkeeping is not accounting. now I'm in software so I see that angle too and know it could be done. 

They don't want to do it. 

I'm willing to pay money for value, but they still wanna have their methods. I am going to look into other accounting systems. 

I don't know what you all are dealing with, your use cases and your usage of the features of quickbooks. I'm sure they're mostly good. My use case is simple. I have rental properties and a parent holding company, so they're de facto consolidated reports. 

Heaven forbid I want to make a journal entry, like when I didn't pay interest from my business bank accounts for a few times as I was setting them up and getting organized. I wanted to and did manually book my HELOC interest for each month. Sancta simplicita- journal entries make things SIMPLER and EASIER. 

But QBO thinks otherwise.. for whatever reason. 

I read that they market as accounting but really are more business service software. Well it's like any opinionated framework with their way and their system and their terminologies combined with their business motives, their SaaS. I'm starting to hate SaaS- software as a service. It's good in theory and the cloud is better but.. it's also a way to milk people and I believe that's what they're doing here. 

Even not having a filter option in reports to filter on content of the memo/description is dumb, and deliberate. That would be so easy to implement. It reminds me of a simple SQL query. it's nothing new. 

They don't care. If they implemented these features, I'd be happy to be proven wrong. I'm capitalist. I love business but I hate this monopolistic or heavy handed. It's not like it's the insurance industry but they're all the same- bots for customer service or have users teach each other in forums, upsel everything, etc. 

The admins here are right about one thing- for pure search functionality excel beats everything. That's what I am going to do for my work on taxes, but I will probably switch. Sometimes the only solution is to walk away. Everyone else has said everything that could be said. In my humble opinion if they treat journal entries as brute force, they don't deserve to call themselves an accounting software, but generic business software or whatever. I also don't know if a higher percentage of us are neurodivergent. i am, and i like the details and i like accuracy- not in all things but in business and finance for sure. Yeah screw quickbooks. They pretend to care but don't, and there's a word for that too. it's called gaslighting. It's not that big of a deal for me.. but still I like people who care and who don't string you along with promises. Just do it. But they won't, so just leave or accept. that's our choice. Find work arounds if you need to. They're money grubbers it seems like. I don't know 100 percent for sure but that's what it seems like, but there are also alternatives. 

Just chiming in to say that all of this is correct. JE's need the assigned names to flow through to reports. I find myself searching the forums every few months to see if this is fixed, only to be met with disappointment each time. Please, QBO.

I just transitioned to QBO and I am appalled at the major changes to my workflows.  With respect to the names not showing up in the printed/exported pdfs, I followed the instructions from far back in this thread (which are not entirely correct, btw, they refer to buttons/dropdowns that don't exist.  However...) I have discovered that at a very low level, the underlying journal entries do not have the Name field filled in, so any report/print/export that goes down to that level as opposed to using the entered and displayed transaction will not show it.

All vituperation aside, why not just bring back the print and export buttons and let us all get back to doing the work we are paid to do?