I have a client that allows pre-orders so for her year-end she has negative quantities so to close/lock her books does anyone have a simple method?

Thank you for bringing this concern to the Community space, @costumer. 

We appreciate the steps you performed in closing books. As of the moment, QuickBooks Online (QBO) does not have a different method of closing books.

When closing books in QBO, we need to clear out any negative or outstanding entries to have zero or balanced results before closing the books.

For more information on closing books, you can view this article: Close your books in QuickBooks Online.

To help improve your experience with QBO, your valuable feedback will be shared with our Product Development Team.

Here's how:
 

1. Click the Gear icon, then choose Feedback.
2. Enter your comments or product suggestions.
3. Click Next to submit.

I recommend checking out this article for more information about closing books:
QuickBooks Online year-end guide and checklist

Feel free to post a reply below if you have any other concerns with QuickBooks Online. I'm always here to help. Have a great day ahead.

Would QBO have plans to introduce a feature to allow the closing of the books with Negative inventory counts?

With e-commerce retailers, allowing pre-orders is common, I would think.

I have previously submitted this suggestion under "Feedback".

Hi there christina-ratte-,

Thank you for submitting your feedback. The comments in that section are considered by our development team when creating new features for QuickBooks Online. To see which features are announced to be upcoming, you can check out this page. Once announced, the features that are coming out are displayed here, with a description of their functionality.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out here.