Trying to clear an account with a journal entry

I'll help you clear the account cdhodgdon. 

The option to delete data after condensing your file is unavailable in QuickBooks Desktop. It's the reason you've encountered an error.

After creating the journal entry, let's apply it to the loan payments to clear the amount. Here's how:

1. From the Vendors menu, select Pay Bills.
2. Select the bill and choose Set Credits.
3. Under the Credits tab, select the available credit and select Done.
4. Select Save & Close.

For more details about managing loans, please see this article: Manually Track Loans in QuickBooks Desktop.

If the issue persists, I'd recommend contacting our QuickBooks Support Team. They can provide additional solutions to fix this. Here's how:

Additionally, I've added these articles that'll help you ensure your record is accurate:

•  Sales Reports
• Vendor Reports
• Company and Financial Reports

Please keep us posted if you have additional questions or concerns about linking the journal entry. We want to make sure your books are accurate.

@CharleneMaeF 

Since I cannot pinpoint the exact date this loan was paid back, can I create a fake bank account and process that item through it and then deactivate the bank account?  Looking at this process, I am not making any new journal entries, correct?  The main thing is that 99.9% of the items in the books are right and I am just needing to clean up some items so they don't show up on reports when they should not be.  Similar to the fact that your girl that handles QB's, when she reconciled the credit cards (all from the same bank, different employees), she only reconciled them from the main credit card account (on the chart of accounts) instead of clearing out each card individually, so on the balance sheet, it still shows that my dad has 5 credit cards with about $500,000 in outstanding balances, LOL.

I'm here to help you clear your credit card account, cdhodgdon. 

You have to create a journal entry to resolve the balance before you inactivate the Credit card account. What you can do is create a clearing account to show where the payment is coming from. This way it will be posted as paid off by the owner.

Here's how to set up a clearing account: 
 

1. Go to the Lists menu, choose Chart of Accounts.
2. Right click anywhere in the Chart of Accounts, then select New.
3. In the Add New Account window, click the Bank radio button.
   Note: While you can choose from several types of accounts, the best is a bank account because of the following reasons:
   • You can pay into a bank account via Receive Payments or Make Deposits.
   • You can pay out of a bank account via Write Checks or Pay Bills.
   • A bank account appears on the balance sheet and on the statement of cash flows to balances and changes in balances.
   • To allocate expenses to overhead or class using a zero check, you must use a bank account as your Clearing account.
4. Click Continue.
5. In the Account Name field, enter Clearing Account, Barter Account or Wash Account.
6. Do NOT enter an opening balance.
7. Select Save & Close.

Then, create a journal entry using the clearing account. I would also recommend consulting with a professional accountant to help you clear out or handle the amount accordingly to avoid messing up your books.

You can also visit this website: Reconcile Workflow. This provides more details about starting, fixing discrepancies, and completing the reconciliation process. 

If there's anything else I can help you with or additional questions about the process of clearing transactions from your accounts, just let me know. I'd be more than happy to assist you further.

@LeizylM 

I may look at that for the credit card, was not as worried as I believe I really just need to go in and do a reconciliation on each individual card, but I will look into this.

My real question about setting up a clearing account (non-real bank account) was for working to clear the journal entries related to loans that were paid off (not sure why they are still in the file as showing owed), but the journal entires were created during a cleanup process, so I can directly modify them.  See my original post and comments.

@LeizylM 

Ok, so I did your suggestion on clearing the old credit cards out, using a Journal Entry, but now, I have run into another issue.  When I did it, the main credit card account now shows a -$778,035.75 for the account.  I have attached a screen shot.  

I most have missed something, somehow.  Good thing is I backed up prior to making changes and I can either restore the backup or just delete the Journal Entries.  Not sure what I did wrong or not.  Thanks