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Chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online

by Intuit•1707• Updated 6 days ago

The chart of accounts is a complete list of your company's accounts and their balances. It organizes your transactions and is used to keep your books and records current.

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Find flexible solutions for your growing business with QuickBooks Advanced. With unlimited chart of accounts and up to 25 users, you have room to grow. Learn more about QuickBooks Advanced today.

Hi, this is Katheryn from the QuickBooks team. The Chart of Accounts is the hub of your accounting. It’s the central place where you decide how you organize your transactions. Every account or category you use in QuickBooks for every transaction comes from the Chart of Accounts. Let's go over the Chart of Accounts, how it helps you organize your business, and how it affects your financial statements. To get to the Chart of Accounts, select the gear > Chart of Accounts. Every transaction you record in QuickBooks affects at least two of these accounts. Usually, it’s the bank or credit card account you spent or received money to, and then an account that describes why. Let’s look at an example. Open the Bank Transactions screen. You see a purchase of some staplers for the office. The transaction is already assigned to the correct bank account. And, QuickBooks suggest the most likely category. You just need to enter or confirm the correct category for why you spent the money. Office Supplies, which is an expense account. Back on the Chart of Accounts, the balance for the bank account decreases by what you spent on the staplers. But down in the Office Supplies expense account you don’t see a balance, like you do with the accounts at the top. Let’s look closer at the types of accounts to see why. Each account uses a specific type. The type tells QuickBooks what the account should track, either the balance of the account, or a total of the transactions for specific time periods. Accounts at the top of the list show you how much you own or owe right now. They include accounts you’re already familiar with, like bank accounts, or credit cards. They have balances that tell you how much money you have in those accounts, or how much you owe. Other accounts, like fixed assets, tell you the value of things you own, like a truck or a warehouse…and liabilities tell you how much you owe, like on a mortgage. Equity accounts show you how much the business is worth to the owner. They also help you track ways the owner invests or draws money from the business. You use equity accounts when the owner deposits money into the business, or when they withdraw money for their personal expenses. Income accounts help you track why you receive money from customers or donors. Cost of goods sold and expense accounts, like Office Supplies, help you track your spending. These accounts don’t have balances because they help you track the profit of your business for a specific time period. You don’t usually want to see how much you spent on Office Supplies since you opened your business. So instead, you run a report to see how much you spent for a month or year. QuickBooks comes with many accounts already set up for you. However, you’ll probably want to add some more. When you do you can add them here. This other video here will show you how. Your accounts don’t have account numbers by default, but you can check out this video to learn how to turn on account numbers. Note that it’s best to work with your accountant to decide which accounts will give you the best insight into your business. Now let’s look at a report. Select Reports. As you categorize transactions, QuickBooks builds your financial statements behind-the-scenes. These are powerful tools that let you and your accountant know how your business is doing. Let’s take a look at the Profit and Loss statement. The Profit & Loss shows all your income, costs of goods sold, and expenses for a specific period of time. These are the same accounts you see in your Chart of Accounts. The total for Income is a sum of all the transactions you categorize as Sales income during this period. The total for Expenses is a sum of all the transactions you categorize as Expenses during this period. And the Office Supplies total includes the stapler expense we recorded earlier. The final line subtracts all your cost of goods sold and expenses from your income to show you the Net Income. If you want to learn more about how to read Reports in QuickBooks Online there is a video at the end of this one with more details. Now you have a basic understanding of what the chart of accounts is and how it affects your transactions and financial statements. If you want to learn more, we have a free Accounting 101 webinar that you can sign up for here.

View your chart of accounts

For a better experience, open this article in QuickBooks Online. Launch side-by-side view

Go to All apps , then Accounting, then Chart of accounts (Take me there).
Review your accounts, which are listed with columns for name, account type, detail type, QuickBooks balance, and bank balance.
Use the buttons above the chart to batch edit multiple accounts, print your chart of accounts, or edit the displayed columns.

If you need help managing your chart of accounts, you can partner with a QuickBooks Live Expert and feel more confident. Find out more about Live Experts.

Account types

The Account Type column categorizes transactions into main financial categories. These types, along with detail types, determine which financial reports (such as the Balance Sheet or Profit and Loss) display the data.

Assets: Money spent on vehicles, equipment, buildings, or other assets used for business.
Liabilities: Money you owe but haven't yet paid, such as loans, mortgages, or lines of credit.
Income: Money earned or gained from normal day-to-day business, such as sales revenue or income from services.
Expenses: Money spent on daily operations, such as advertising, office supplies, or rent.

Default accounts

Accounts Payable (A/P): Tracks outstanding bills your business owes. If you have multiple A/P accounts, you can select which one to use when entering or paying bills.
Accounts Receivable (A/R): Tracks transactions for customers who owe you money. You can select specific A/R accounts when creating invoices or receiving payments.
Opening Balance Equity: Represents your starting balance before entering company assets and liabilities.
Payroll Expense: Tracks company payroll expenses, including salaries, wages, bonuses, commissions, company-paid health plans, and the company-paid portion of taxes (like Social Security and Medicare).
Payroll Liabilities: Tracks taxes withheld from employee pay that you owe to the government, including federal/state income taxes and employee-paid taxes like Medicare and Social Security.
Payroll Tax Asset Holding: Tracks taxes debited from you when running payroll that have not yet been paid to tax agencies. This account is available only if you have QuickBooks Online Payroll and Intuit pays your taxes for you.
Retained Earnings: Tracks all profits from earlier periods not distributed to owners. QuickBooks automatically transfers net income to this account at the start of the fiscal year.
Sales Tax Payable: Tracks sales tax you collect and pay. This account appears only if you have turned on sales tax.
Uncategorized Expense: Tracks spending that needs to be categorized.
Uncategorized Income: Tracks earnings that need to be categorized.
Undeposited Funds (also called Payments to Deposit): Tracks cash or checks ready for deposit at the bank.
Inventory Asset: Tracks the current value of your inventory. This appears only if inventory tracking is turned on.
Reconciliation Discrepancy: Tracks adjustments made to resolve reconciliation discrepancies.

Manage accounts

You can customize the chart of accounts to fit your business needs.

Edit accounts: You can add, edit, or reactivate accounts.
Make inactive: You can remove an account from your active list by making it inactive. This prevents new transactions but retains the account in your records.
Account numbers: While not required, you can use account numbers if recommended by your accountant.

View transaction history