Guidance on adding "Owner's Equity" transactions for a large number (400+) of already categorized transactions from a personal credit card.

I understand the importance of categorizing transactions correctly under Owner's Equity in QuickBooks Online (QBO). I'm here to share insights about this. 

We can export the 400+ transactions from the Categorized tab. Please note that this is the file you will use when reimporting transactions. 

Once done, exclude these 400+ transactions from the For Review tab. When importing a CSV file into QBO, there's a certain format that we need to follow. For more information about the accepted CSV file format, check out this article: Format CSV files in Excel to get bank transactions into QuickBooks. 

On the other hand, if you want to categorize without splitting the transaction, you can reverse all values. If you still have the original copy of the transactions. This way, you won't have to edit the offsetting amount and can set up bank rules to allocate them to the Owner's Equity. 
 

Also, you can create bank rules in QuickBooks to help speed up the categorization process. Please check this article for more details: Set up bank rules to categorize online banking transactions in QuickBooks Online.

I'd still suggest consulting an accountant. This way, they'll be able to help categorize transactions in QBO.

Feel free to seek assistance if you encounter any challenges during the process or need further guidance on categorizing your transactions. I'm always here to help. Have a great day. 

I'd like to keep the original categorization of these transactions because it shows where the money actually went. If I assign them all the "Owner's Equity," I will lose the accurate vendor reporting when generating P&L reports. I would imagine that's why the recommendation in the article is to add a 2nd line item to zero out the expense via an "Owner's Equity" line item. This way, you get the ability to see how much addition out of pocket you're putting into the business while preserving the audit trail of where the dollars are actually going.

I am already using bank rules. However, I don't see any option in the rules to do something like "if match, split transaction" or "if match, add a new (-1*amount) transaction and assign to 'Owner's Equity'". It would be great if something like this existed.

Can you clarify what you mean here? Are you suggesting that I am actually able to split transactions via a CSV import? If so, can you please provide an example? As far as I can tell, each CSV line will equal a single transaction, even if I were to use the 4-column format.

I can very easily duplicate all the 400+ transactions, negate them and simply assign them all to the "Owner's Equity" category as a separate transaction. Will this break any sort of Accounting rules or business reports/reconciliation processes? If not, this seems to be the easiest solution but it's not what's recommended in the linked support article, so I am hesitant to take this step if it's going to result in inconsistencies in the accounting.
On the other hand, if you want to categorize without splitting the transaction, you can reverse all values. If you still have the original copy of the transactions. This way, you won't have to edit the offsetting amount and can set up bank rules to allocate them to the Owner's Equity. 

I can see how beneficial it is to keep the original categorization of the transactions, cparsons.

Let me provide some ways and make it up by explaining why there's no option to offset the whole amount on the Banking page.

In QuickBooks Online (QBO), the split transaction is designed to allocate multiple categories wherein the total amount must be equal to the amount of the transactions. Splitting the transactions via CSV import isn't possible. 

However, it's best to create a journal entry upon entering your transactions. It lets you move money between accounts and force your books to balance in specific ways. 

Here's how:

1. Select +New.
2. Choose Journal entry.
3. On the first line, select an account from the Account field. Depending on if you need to debit or credit the account, enter the amount in the correct column.
4. On the next line, select the other account you're moving money to or from. Depending on if you entered a debit or credit on the first line, enter the same amount in the opposite column.
5. Check the amounts - you should have the same amount in the Credit column on one line and Debit column on the other. This means the accounts are in balance.
6. Enter information in the memo section so you know why you made the journal entry.
7. Select Save and new or Save and close.

You can also seek assistance from your accountant if you need further guidance categorizing the transactions in your QuickBooks Online account. If you don't have one, you can use our Find-an-Accountant tool to look for an expert near you.

Additionally, here's an article you can browse through in case you need assistance on how to reconcile your accounts so they always match your bank and credit card statements: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online.

If you still have further queries managing your transactions in QBO, feel free to let me know. I'd be glad to assist you 24/7. Stay safe.

Yes but hadn't quite gotten to the point where I needed to figure out how to deal with that negative balance just yet. This sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. If you can't tell, I've got zero book keeping experience. I don't really know what I don't know but I do know that my taxes take me way too long to complete! I'm trying to make subsequent years a bit easier on myself but I'm not sure what's considered accepted practice when making everything balance. I would have thought you'd need some way to map that random journal entry back to the imported expenses they're meant to be associated with. Is there an accepted way to do that? I suppose I could just add a single journal entry for each of the last 3 years which totals the sum of the expenses and call it a day. Moving forward, I'll make sure this is tracked on an expense by expense basis, it's really just the historical stuff that's problematic, at the moment.

Yes but hadn't quite gotten to the point where I needed to figure out how to deal with that negative balance just yet. This sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. If you can't tell, I've got zero book keeping experience. I don't really know what I don't know but I do know that my taxes take me way too long to complete! I'm trying to make subsequent years a bit easier on myself but I'm not sure what's considered accepted practice when making everything balance. I would have thought you'd need some way to map that random journal entry back to the imported expenses they're meant to be associated with. Is there an accepted way to do that? I suppose I could just add a single journal entry for each of the last 3 years which totals the sum of the expenses and call it a day. Moving forward, I'll make sure this is tracked on an expense by expense basis, it's really just the historical stuff that's problematic, at the moment.

@HeHasBareFeet 

It's important to know that all entries made in QB are based on double-entry accounting (a debit and a credit).  No matter what entry is made (a bank download, an expense, payroll, etc,), there are always TWO accounts associated with each entry.  In your case, when you downloaded bank transactions and classified them as expenses, QB increased your expense (the debit) and decreased your cash (the credit).  And, since we know the debit entry (expense) is correct, the credit entry must be incorrect.  And, since you downloaded them from a personal bank account, we know that's incorrect.  Therefore, we need to reclassify that to your equity account per the journal entry in my previous post.  You should not, in any way, expect yourself to know this.

The beauty of double-entry accounting is you can't bury these entries very easily.  This issue would have been quickly identified when you ran a balance sheet and saw the negative bank balance.  The important part is the accuracy of your financial statements and reconciling your accounts each month goes a long ways in doing that. 

"I would have thought you'd need some way to map that random journal entry back to the imported expenses they're meant to be associated with. Is there an accepted way to do that? "

That "random journal entry'" is not as random as you may think.  The transaction flow can be identified from the bank download through the journal entry by the common personal bank account.  The journal entry is all you need to do to resolve this.    

This is EXTREMELY helpful! Thank you for putting me on the right path. I have a ton more learning to do but can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time.