How can I use the Filter property to EXCLUDE one or more accounts from my P

Hi there, gstuart.

I love to help you with your issue about QuickBooks Online (QBO).

To ensure that I'm on the same page, can you add more details about the assistance you need? Any additional data would be greatly appreciated so I can provide you with the right information.

In the meantime, if you need some assistance with managing your account, you can visit our Community Help Articles hub.

Keep me posted so I can help you further. Take care always and have a great day.

I don't know what else to tell you.  In the Customize dialog, I need to filter out one account from the report.  How do I do that?

Hello there, @gstuart.

Thank you for reaching out to us. I'm here to help you locate the exclude button in QuickBooks Online (QBO). 

Before you exclude a downloaded transaction, make sure to exclude the right transaction.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to the Banking or Transactions menu on the left panel.
2. Go to the Banking tab, click the account you want to use. 
3. Tap the For Review tab.

4. Check the box beside the transactions you want to exclude.

5. Click the Batch actions drop-down, choose to Exclude Selected. 

6. The items will be moved to the Excluded section.  

7. From the Excluded tab, put a check in the box for the transaction you'd like to permanently delete. 

8. Choose Batch actions, then Delete. 

9. You'll be asked if you're sure. Click YES to confirm. 

You can undo transactions that were excluded incorrectly. 

Here’s an article for you to learn how to customize reports in QuickBooks Online. For future reference, see QuickBooks product or service. 

There you have it. Drop me a reply if you have any follow-up questions about excluding transactions. I'm always happy to help. 

Were you able to get this excluded?

I'm wanting to do the same thing. I have a checking account that I don't want included in my P/L statement.

Hello, Adam. 

I'd like to share some important pointers about what affects the Profit and Loss report. I'll also throw in a process that'll help you filter out your checking account from the report. 

The Profit and Loss reports are driven by income and expense accounts. Your banks are classified under Balance Sheet accounts, so they won't affect the Profit and Loss report (we're unable to filter them out). 

However, there is a workaround for this. You'll want to use the Location tracking feature, then assign locations to your transactions as you record them (works if you have the Plus or Advanced version).

Turn on the Location tracking:  

1. Go to the Gear icon, then select Account and settings.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Expand the Categories section, then toggle Track locations to On (select a location label if needed). 
4. Hit Save, then Done.

Add locations for your bank accounts: 

1. Go to the Gear icon, then select All lists.
2. On the Lists screen, select Locations.
3. Click New.
4. On the Information dialog, enter the bank account name.
5. Hit Save.

As you enter your income or expense transactions, there will be a field where you can assign a location (for the bank account). Simply add a location, then enter the transaction details normally. 

Now, run the Profit and Loss by Location report, and filter out the bank accounts you don't want using the Location filter option. 

A side-by-side comparison between unfiltered and filtered Profit and Loss by Location report: 

This works well if you only have a few transactions entered. It may not be viable if there are hundreds of entries already recorded, but you can always pull them up and assign the locations. 

Though, comparing your Balance Sheet and your Profit and Loss reports can also be an option. Then, use the Location tracking workaround for the next succeeding transactions. 

A reference about this method can be found here: Run a Profit and Loss report by bank account in QuickBooks Online.

If you're ready to reconcile your bank accounts, we have a guide that'll help you with the process: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online.

Do you need help recording a specific transaction or would you like to run other reports? Let me know and I'd be glad to assist you again. 

OK perfect, so to be clear, in order to EXCLUDE something, we have to classify everything we DO NOT want to EXCLUDE, thereby making the EXCLUDE function basically useless right?

Hi there, @Wilson, 

To clear up your confusion, let me share some information about Exclude function in Quickbooks Online (QBO).

The option to exclude has separate functions from what my colleagues @LollyNino_C and @jamespaul mentioned above. 

Normally, it is only applicable in banking if you want to keep a downloaded transaction from going into your company expenses.

On the other hand, the workaround that @jamespaul has provided is only used for excluding the bank accounts on the Profit & Loss report.

For detailed information, kindly visit: Exclude a bank transaction you downloaded into QuickBooks Online.

You may also want to read this article to learn how to review downloaded bank and credit card transactions and put them in the correct accounts: Categorize and match online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online.

Don't hesitate to leave a reply if you require further assistance with excluding transactions in QBO. I'm here to help anytime. Have a great day!

Hello @DHeraV We might be speaking about completely separate things here, from my understanding the original question was talking about the filter in customisation of the P&L Statement.

What you are talking about is excluding transactions from import into a bank account.

This is something completely different and we are not discussing this.

Instead we are discussing excluding certain accounts from the P&L statement.

The problem becomes even more acute when choosing to excluding 'customers'.

Because the issue is when you use the select filter, you can only INCLUDE, not EXCLUDE.

This begs the question: "why not select ALL customers EXCEPT the customers that you do not want included in the report?"

And the answer to that question is of course: "The resulting report does not include transactions for which there is no customer"

So then the resulting P&L Statement where you select all customers EXCEPT the one you want to exclude does not produce an accurate report.

A simple solution would be to change filter to exclude OR include (currently forced to include only)
OR
Allow non-defined to be a checkbox instead of a summary selection (such as it is now)

Did this ever get a fix / response from somebody at QB? 3 years later I am having the same issue, can't exclude an account or vendor. And all the support I can find online is for 'excluding' one transaction at a time.

We appreciate all the efforts that you've exerted to filter transactions from your Profit and Loss report in QuickBooks Online (QBO), Dayotaas. I'll share further information regarding this below.

In QBO, creating tailored financial reports like the Profit and Loss report can be a straightforward process, allowing you to focus on the data that matters most to your business. While it’s true when you mentioned that you can only exclude one transaction at a time, this gives you the flexibility to customize each transaction based on your specific needs.
 

To exclude transactions, you can click the Customization button in the upper right side of your screen, then filter the transactions or manually tick the ones you wish to include or exclude from the report. This approach allows you to ensure that your report precisely reflects your financial situation by showing only the transactions you want to include.

Once you're done with all the changes, you can then use the Save Customization button to save your filter settings. Afterwards, you can memorize your reports in QuickBooks if you want the same settings of the customized report to be available for future use.

Additionally, I'll share this article in case you want to export your reports to Microsoft Excel from QBO: Export your reports to Excel from QuickBooks Online.

Please know that you can always reply below if you've any questions about customizing profit and loss reports. We'll be right here to assist you with your concerns. Have a nice day.

This is a bad answer because it assumes QuickBooks users are tiny little business with a couple dozen transactions.

for us this is not the case, if we do a profit and loss statement we see every transaction.

if we include all of the customers except for specific customers, we miss every transaction where there is no customer (essentially every expense item like overheads as opposed to CoGs which is assigned to customers).

if we exclude specific transactions we must go through every single transaction and manually excuse them (thousands of transactions, how fun!!!)

but even if we did that, what about future transactions that should be excluded because they are in association with a specific customer??? Well, time to manually update it again.

or, we could just have an exclude option. Exclude transactions for this customer.

or we could have an include option for undefined,

such as include for all these customers and also transactions for which customer is undefined.

or I guess we use a different system than QuickBooks online to actually get decent reporting filters.

Solution: 'then manually tick the ones you wish to include or exclude from the report'

This is not an acceptable answer. The reason bookkeepers want to exclude transactions of a type/ vendor/ etc is because of the volume and inconvenience of doing it manually. Suggesting going through 500+ transactions and selecting them one-by-one to exclude is not a feature', how ridiculous.

Issue first posted 3+years ago and still not addressed, unbelievable.

@DaYoTaAs 

This may not work for you, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned it.  You can exclude certain attributes on a report by selecting 'not equals' for a filter.  What specific report are you trying to run, and what specific transaction type/vendor/account, etc., are you trying to exclude?  For example, on a P&L, you can exclude:

Distribution account (specific GL Account)

Account type (Income, COGS, Equity, etc.)

Customer

Vendor

Employee

Product/Service

To see what you can exclude on a given report, run the report you want, click Filter > Select from above > Select not equals > Select specific account/customer/vendor, etc. 

Yes, it would be convenient to exclude a specific Account (that is listed in the Chart of Accounts) from the Profit & Loss statement using an attribute, I do agree -- but let's assume that the QB engineers have some good reason to not offer this (irritating as it is to us business owners).

However, one easy workaround is to add a Journal Entry that negates the amount you want to hide. For example, let's say we have an account called "Personal Expenses" and this totals $5000.00 for the year. Then, I add a Journal Entry for that Account for -5,000.00 in one of the Bank Registers, effectively zeroing out this Account. Next, I change the Options of the P&L report to show non-zero amounts only. This completely hides this Account from the P&L report.

Would this work for the people on this thread?

Hi Rainflurry

Thanks for the response, yes this works but only for reports. The unfinished title made me assume it was for bank transactions which are highly unfilterable and is a documented problem since 2022 (possibly? you have to manually tick each one to 'Exclude'...)

I assumed and jumped in mad at an old infuriating problem ha! Cheers for your time though DS