journal entry with customer and non customer

Hey there, Diggingin. 

Thanks for dropping by the Community today, I'm happy to provide some feedback on this for you. The Journal Entry requires a customer no matter what if it's an A/R or A/P account. You can find some helpful and additional information on this at the following link. 

• Quick Refresher on Journal Entries. 

If there's anything else I can help with, feel free to post here anytime. Thanks and have a lovely day. 

It’s not an AP or AR account it’s an expense account. It was previously not assigned but I now need to assign part of it to a customer that is why I need a journal entry that part is assigned but not all. However QuickBooks won’t let me not assign part of it - it chooses the first customer in the list if I leave it blank. 

Hi @Diggingin,

Thank you for your prompt reply, as well as for sharing additional information on your situation. 

I've created sample journal entries on my end, but I didn't get any error messages, nor see the system automatically assign a customer to a line of the journal entry where I left it blank. As my peer @Nick_M stated above, it will only require a customer or a vendor, for the A/R and A/P type of accounts, respectively. 

At this point, I suggest that you contact your bookkeeper or accountant, and ask for assistance on how to proceed with your journal entry.

Another way you can use journal entries in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT) is to remove A/R, and/or A/P balances from a cash basis Balance Sheet on the last day of a reporting period. See the steps in this article: Resolve AR or AP on the cash basis Balance Sheet with journal entries. 

If you have other questions about journal entries, leave a comment below. I'll get back to you. 

I can't believe you suggested contacting an Accountant - wow.

Go back and check your entry and how it hits the customer P&L - you will see even though it did not assign a customer it shows as a 0 amount in the customer P&L - with a customer on only one part of the journal entry it will assign the other side (even if you don't see it in the journal entry you will see it in the financials)

This doesn't seem correct. We need to adjust the Payables GL balance without identifying a vendor because of previous years' errors. If the AJE requires a vendor, then our subledger is forever wrong. Why can't a JE be done on an A/P or A/R account without identifying a cust or vendor?

Hi I was wondering if you ever got a good answer about your journal entry.  I am having the same problem. We input our actual labor hours spent on jobs for the week in a journal entry and then credit an account for their actual pay. The problem we just discovered is the credited account is not for a specific job. But even though we don't assign it a customer job, the crazy journal entry applies it to the 1st entry customer.  My only work around I have found is we created a bogus customer to put the credit entry in other wise a $200 customer job could have a 5000 cost to it. UGH!!  I was hoping you found a better solution, other than changing software companies.

Unfortunately we never received a response. :-(

Thanks for your prompt response, @nduffy.

Since you're still having trouble with journal entries, I recommend contacting our Customer Support Team. They have additional tools to look further into your account to see why this is happening. 

1. Go to the Help menu. 
2. Select QuickBooks Desktop Help. 
3. Press Contact Us. 
4. Type in your question and click Continue. 
5. Scroll down and choose to Get a Callback.

Also, you may want to check these articles for more information about adjusting your entries:

• Use journal entries to adjust your client’s books
• Import journal entries from your accountant

Let me know if you have other QuickBooks-relevant questions. I'm always here to answer them. Take care always.

Been there, done that. They were no help. I don't believe the functionality exists.

I agree.  You have to pay a small fortune for QB Online Advanced and the customer support reply is to contact an accountant.  So ridiculous I had to laugh out loud.

Hi - I've created a vendor and a customer named "Misc Vendor" or "Misc Customer" and use those accounts to clear journal entries through.  It has always worked for me and I hope it works for you.  Since you can't have a payable without a vendor, which makes sense, it is a way to net things out.

Hi Barbara - I've done the same on the A/R side, and now it seems I'm forever going to have a Misc Customer with a balance.  Have you figured a way around that?  Thanks so much!

I discovered I had the same problem. An expense that a portion should have been allocated to a Customer wasn't. So did a general journal entry Debit Monthly Overhead account to the Customer and Credit the Mobility account in the general account. But both sides showed up in my P&L for the Customer. Basically zeroed out the amount on the P&L.

Discovered that if I did the journal entry this way, that didn't happen:

Mobility account - Credit - Vendor Name - Class General 

Monthly Overhead - Debit - Customer Name/Job - Class Job

Not sure why this works but it did for me.

Just thought I would put this out there in case someone else is having this same issue.