Multiple Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable in QBO

Got it! Thank you, @ReymondO .

Hi there, @SSWap5922.

Yes, it's possible to merge multiple A/P account in QuickBooks Online. 

Normally, the transactions after merging an account will be moved into the register of the one you wish to keep. Thus. it'll accumulate the total balance of all your transactions from the older and the newer account.

You can also check this link for the complete guidelines: Merge duplicate accounts, customers, and vendors in QuickBooks Online. If you don't wish to merge them, you can delete the unwanted A/P account.

When everything is in place, you can utilize this article for future reference: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online. This link can walk you through the steps in matching your accounts effectively.

In case you have other concerns or questions in supervising your accounts, tag me in your reply. I’d be more than happy to work with you again.

Thanks for getting back to us, @SSWap5922.

Yes, you can merge all your unwanted A/Ps and apply for open payments. About the unintentionally applied payments, you'll have to unlink the payment from the bill manually to correct it. Let me guide you how:

1. Open the bill.
2. Tap the Payment link to the bill, and then select the Date link. See the image below.
3. In the Bill Payment window, uncheck the box next to the bill transaction. 
4. Click Save and close.

On the contrary, the Account Payable Aging Report gets its data from the default Account Payable (A/P) account. You'll want to use the Transaction Detail by Account report to view transactions from all A/P accounts.

Refer to this link to learn the different reports in QuickBooks: Reports included in your QuickBooks Online subscription.

With the above recommendation, you're able to correct your A/P accounts and view account reports.

Please don't hesitate to reply if you have follow-up questions or concerns with Accounts Payable (A/P). I'll around to help. Take care and have a great day ahead.

Hi. I would like to have two types of invoices in my system as I did with Desktop. One for customers that has 110 Accounts Receivable as the A/R posting account and one for Donors that has 112 Pledges Receivable as the A/R posting account. How do I do this?

Hello there, @windrushfarm.

Your default Accounts Receivable is the one that was created when you set up your company in QuickBooks Online or those you selected during conversion. However, if in your case you want to have two invoices to be recorded in their respective Accounts Receivables, you can do either one of the following:

First, set up parent and sub-customers to group your open receivables. This allows you to group and sub-total your open receivables by the parent customer. Here's how:

Step 1: Create a parent customer

You must create a parent customer for each Accounts Receivable type you need in order to be able to group your open receivables by the parent customer.

1. Go to Sales and select Customers.
2. Select New customer to open the Customer information dialog.
3. Specify a name for the account in the Company field. To locate the parent customer, utilize the name of an Accounts Receivable account on the Chart of Accounts.
4. Select Save.

Repeat the steps for every Accounts Receivable you need.

Step 2: Change your existing customers to sub-customers.

You need to identify which customers are sub-customers of the parent you created.

1. Go to Sales and select Customer.
2. Locate and select the existing customer to change.
3. Select Edit to open the customer information.
4. Select the Is a sub-customer checkbox.
5. Choose the parent customer you created from the Parent customer dropdown list.
6. Select Save.

Your open receivables can now be totaled, grouped, and filtered by parent accounts for customer reports.

Another way to group or divide receivables is to use location tracking. You must turn on location tracking first on the Advanced tab of the Account and Settings page. After that, you may set up several locations to utilize by selecting the Location item on the All Lists screen. Please refer to this article for more information about location tracking: Set up and use location tracking.   

When locations are enabled and configured, you may run your report to ensure that every transaction is attributed to a location that is connected with an Accounts Receivable type, and then you can customize it to only report on one location at a time. You must run a separate report for each location, as you cannot run one report and sort it by location.

Here's an article I've included that will help you in customizing your reports: Customize reports in QuickBooks Online. 

Let me know if you have any other concerns in handling your invoices and Accounts Receivables in QBO. I'm always around to help. Have a great day! 

If Bills can not be posted in the 2nd accounts payable then what's the use of 2nd payable account?

There should be a way to post the bills in the 2nd accounts payable. and that preference can be in item or vendor setup page

Thank you for reaching out to us, @chjavedjatt. I'd be glad to help you with your accounts payable in QuickBooks Online.

QuickBooks generates a default account for Accounts Payable(A/P) when you set up your company, where bills get posted automatically. If you would like to transfer, you can use a journal entry. I recommend submitting this feedback to our Product Development Team. Thus, they can review and determine what features to add for future product enhancements.

Here's how:

1. Click the Gear icon and choose Feedback.
2. Enter your feedback Suggestion.
3. Press Next.

Moreover, feel free to visit our Feedback forum to track the progress of your feature request. 

The following article contains additional insight into this: How to group Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable account types. 

If you have any further queries or problems with accounts payable (A/P), don't be afraid to respond. I'll be here to assist. Have a pleasant day and be careful.

The non-availability of an method to easily assign an invoice (and subsequent recurring invoice) to a desired A/R account is lame.  I have watched  invoices for the same customer and service vary from one A/R to another seemingly arbitrarily.  QB, get up on the porch with the big boys.

So despite having 2 Accounts Payable on my Chart of Accounts, I cant use the other AP Account on creating a bill? only the default AP account?

I understand you need to add a description, @moonbyul. I'll share the steps to submit feedback. Providing us with feedback will help improve and help you to have a better experience with QuickBooks Online.

Since QuickBooks uses the default accounts on bills, we can send a request to our product developer.

Follow the steps below:

1. Go to the Gear icon.
2. Under the Profile column, press the Feedback button.
3. Write your product suggestion, then click Next.

Our Product Development team receives your thoughtful comments (QBO) through the feature request tracking QuickBooks Online Feature Requests website.

Alternatively, we can get ideas for these Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about importing data: Common questions about importing data to QuickBooks Online.

Please feel free to remark with your response. I'm excited to provide more information on importing and exporting-related matters. Have a great day.

How can using a location be used to set up a separate a/r or a/p account if the bill pay function or cash receipt function does not have a location field?

Patricia McAvoy

[email address removed]

Thanks for joining this thread, Patricia. I can share a detailed look at how the location tracking works in QuickBooks Online.

The location tracking feature can't be applied to the Pay bills and Receive payment forms. This is useful when tracking your sales, purchases, and profitability by business location. And, it's used to assign an entire transaction, not per line item.

That being said, you're unable to use the location tracking to track different accounts payable and receivables. You'll want to use the Profit and Loss by Location to see which amounts are tracked to the specified location.

To get started, go to Business overview, then select Reports. Once you're there, here’s what you can do.

1. Find and open the Profit and Loss by Location.
2. Make sure Locations is selected from the Display columns by drop-down.
   
3. Customize other data and fields.
4. Click Run report.

Find out which accounts can be deleted, edited, or merged through this article: Manage default and special accounts in QuickBooks Online.

I hope we’ll stay in touch and get to work together again in the future @pmac. Please don’t hesitate to provide feedback and suggestions to help us improve, even from afar. Have a wonderful weekend!

I'm the bookkeeper for nonprofits and I too need to have an AP account for services and and AP account for pledges/gifts. I agree that the inability to post invoices directly to multiple AP accounts is totally lame. One of my gigs uses the older Quickbooks Desktop 2020 and I have four different AP accounts to separate out our receivables by business function and it works perfectly. QBO needs to stop dumbing down its online version and have the same functionality that QBDT has... ESPECIALLY since the sales rep at QB told me that they're phasing out QBDT eventually.  I'll also post this to feedback. Very frustrating. 

How does this affect the balance sheet? Will only one A/R account still show? Because otherwise, this is a piss-poor solution that doesn't work.

Let me join this conversation and provide some insights, @Bridgettdw.

The balance sheet report will still show the total amounts of the A/R account. As @Brookline News Accoiunting said, QuickBooks Online (QBO) automatically posts created bills to a default A/R account, regardless of multiple A/R accounts created. 

With this, I encourage adding your vote for this one by sending Feedback within QBO. This will enable us to enhance our product and make it even better.

1. Select the Gear icon at the top.
2. Select Feedback.
3. Enter your comments or product suggestions. Then select Next to submit.

I'll add this article as guide in the future if you want to make changes in your accounts in QBO:

• Make an account inactive on your chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online
• Add an account to your chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online

You're always welcome to visit the Community again if you have any other questions about generating financial reports. We are always here to assist you.

Our nonprofit receives government contract funds as well as donations. We want the invoices to post to separate ARs.  In the past we have used JE's to do this, but want to invoice for the contracted amounts to better track the revenue. How can we set a second default AR for contracts and keep the pledges receivable for donations? 

Thanks for following along with the thread and sharing your concerns, @grthomp11. 

Quickbooks Online offers Fund Accounting solutions for non profits. Fund Accounting is an accounting method used by non-profits in which funds are allocated to expenses before the money is actually spent. When the fund is empty, the accounting system doesn't allow any more spending against the fund.

When using Fund Accounting in QuickBooks Online, you can use Class tracking and banking sub-accounts to track individual funds. I'm including some steps to walk you through the process below.

First, you'll need to turn on class tracking, then add a new class for each fund. Here's how: 

1. Go to the Gear Icon, then select All lists.
2. Click on Classes.
3. Hit New, then enter the name of a fund in the Name field.
4. Select Save.

Repeat these steps for each of the funds you need to track.

When you enter fund transactions, you can now select the appropriate fund in the Class field for the income or expense line affected.

Once you've added your classes, you're ready to track multiple funds with bank sub accounts. 

To explain, if you have multiple funds, you can have the total for all the funds recorded to a single bank account on your Chart of Accounts, but have multiple sub-accounts to track individual funds.

You can set up a different sub-account for each fund to track. Every transaction you link to one of the sub-accounts you create is reflected in the parent account.

To set up sub-accounts: 

1. Go to Transactions, then Chart of accounts.
2. Select New and do one of the following depending on which panel you see.

Once everything has been set up, you can run a profit and loss by class report to review the fund income and expenses. 

For additional information about this process, check out Fund Accounting for non profits in QuickBooks Online. 

Please keep in mind it is always best to discuss any changes to your account with your accounting professional before hand. If you don't have an accountant, don't sweat it. You can find one here in our Resource Center. 

Please let me know if there is anything else that I can assist you with. Take care!

Thank you.  We are actually already using the fund tracking with classes for the different programs we run.  My question was more about how the invoiced funds show up on the Statement of Financial Position. We have both Accounts Receivable and Pledges Receivable.  All invoices automatically go under Pledges Receivable.  We would like to be able to choose whether it is under Pledges Receivable or Accounts Receivable. We want to separate government revenue from donor revenue on that report. 

Let me help you properly record and track transactions under Pledges and Accounts Receivables, Grthomp.

When you create your company in QuickBooks Online (QBO), specific default accounts in your chart of accounts are created depending on the business entity you selected.

For non-profit organizations, the separation of pledge and invoice to automatically assign as Accounts Receivable or Pledge Receivable is unavailable. The default account of the nonprofit is Pledges Receivables where future promises to give made by donors are being tracked automatically. If you want to track your Accounts Receivable or move the invoices to an A/R account, you can create a journal entry instead. To do so, follow the steps outlined below:

1. Go to the + New.
2. Select 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 the 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. Click Save and new or Save and close.

However, I still recommend reaching out to your accountant for other ways how you can track them to both accounts. 

In addition, Quickbooks offers reports that cater to your business needs. You'll only have to filter them to make sure that the right data shows on your end. I've added this article for reference: Customize Data In QuickBooks Online.

Reply to your comment below if you need further assistance when tracking accounts. I'll always be right here to assist. 

Again, this is a useless solution. It is time consuming and ridiculous, especially when you can set this up in the desktop version easily without any additional work. I'm also in non-profit and no one has time to do extra journaling for a solution that should already be built in. As for reaching out to an accountant, based on the questions being asked, I imagine that most of us ARE accountants (I am) and know what we want and how to do it if the software would just let us. I know how to set up multiple A/R accounts. I know how I want them to look on the Statement of Financial Position. What I don't know is why all the extra steps are needed to show separate A/R accounts on the Statement of Financial Position. What are we supposed to do, a journal entry every single time we get a new pledge or a government grant to get it to the correct account? I have been using the desktop version of QB since 2016, I know what it's capable of and this "solution" is pitiful.

Thank you! I feel so vindicated hearing your response. I too use Desktop for a longtime client and tried to set up QBO for a new non-profit startup. After wasting hours and hours with failed reports I ended up switching over to the desktop version so I could set up multiple ARs for pledges, sponsorships and grants. All of which function differently.

Additionally the Fund accounting doesn't work in QBO and if you try to run a balance sheet by class, many of the transaction show up as unclassed even though they are! I spent HOURS on the phone with support until they finally admitted that it doesn't work since that report "only looks at the top line" whatever that means.... basically only GJE's show up in the right class but individual expenses and income remain unclassed even when assigned a class. It's BASIC BOOKKEEPING!! (can you hear my frustration?) anyway, QBDT is the way to go until they get their act together. Good luck!