Balance sheet class analysis

contactdavid · ‎October 15, 2018

Dear All

I am setting up QB using classes. I've just put a trial set of bank transactions through and each one is assigned to a class as well as an expense code. However they appear as 'unclassified' against the bank account on the balance sheet report but are correctly shown on the 'financial activity' income and expenditure report - any ideas??

Regards David

Rustler · ‎October 15, 2018

A class tracks the transaction, what the transaction was for in other words. It does not report on where or how the transaction originated.

You paid an expense, the class reports on that expense
but not whether you paid by bank, cash, or credit card, or even a loan - the source is not reportable

Same is true for the location tag

View solution in original post

Rustler · ‎October 15, 2018

A class tracks the transaction, what the transaction was for in other words. It does not report on where or how the transaction originated.

You paid an expense, the class reports on that expense
but not whether you paid by bank, cash, or credit card, or even a loan - the source is not reportable

Same is true for the location tag

contactdavid · ‎October 15, 2018

Thanks for the answer - We are trialling QBs. I will put it down to another peculiarity with it - I have found there are many. We are a charity and using Classes to track different funds - It works for surpluses but not for the bank accounts - will have to journalise the 'Not specified' column to where it should be.

contactdavid · ‎October 15, 2018

I journalised the bank totals into the correct class and then ran the balance sheet report by class but listing non zero columns only - This roundabout method works. QB should get these sort of things sorted out - they are not intuitive intuit!

Rustler · ‎October 15, 2018

gear>Your company>feedback to suggest an improvement or report a bug to the developers

Biggsie · ‎October 15, 2018

I'd say that classes are "not supported" in Quickbooks. It's halfway there and until it's properly supported, they should pull it from the feature list. Pretty embarrassing from a 20+ year old product.

Malcolm Ziman · ‎October 15, 2018

"I'd say that classes are "not supported" in Quickbooks" - why do you say that?

Biggsie · ‎October 15, 2018

- While you can add an class to an expense transaction, it's it only added to the expense, not to corresponding cash/AP part of the transaction. Class is just as appropriate for BS accounts as it is for PL accounts. You'll find that you *can* assign a class to a BS account trx if it's manually created. That's insane.
- While you can batch edit class as you categorize new transactions, you can't modify that class via batch once it's "In Quickbooks". If you go to Expenses, you'll notice that you can recategorize any trx in batch but there's not an option for class. Big oversight. Likewise, if you want to filter trx by class in the Expense screen, it's not an option.

This inconsistency is all over the app. For some reason, they just elected not to finish it. It's unfortunate.

Malcolm Ziman · ‎October 15, 2018

I use classes and it is very useful. I don't need it for balance sheet accounts and I believe most users don't, as assets and liabilities are owned by the entity as a whole, not by the any segments If you really need to segment balance sheet accounts you can do it - it's just a bit more work. As for your other complaints, QBO is full of weird quirks, but not enough to make it unusable. You just have to work with what you have - or you can spend a lot more money and and get everything you want.

Biggsie · ‎October 15, 2018

I understand your POV re: BS accounts. But the omissions with respect to filtering and batch updates on expense accounts are serious shortcomings. Software has taken huge strides in the last five years and our expectations should be higher than what we had in Quickbooks 2000.

contactdavid · ‎October 15, 2018

You are right that the expense side of it is very useful - I use that all the time. However, we are a charity and have funds that are restricted to specific purposes. Whilst we can separate them in the balance sheet manually - we do this with some difficulty - it would be so very much easier if we could have the class we assign in the income and expenditure account reflected in the bank accounts and other balance sheet items. Hence I agree with Biggsie that classes are 'only half way there'. It would not take a lot of development work for QB to put this right. A cloud based standard product drives the costs of software development and maintenance down and can be spread over 1000s of users - so I don't see why they just don't do it. All users who are charities would benefit.

Regards
David

coordinator · ‎October 15, 2018

So, I just upgraded our organization to QB Pro yesterday and am exploring class feature (so bear with me!!).  First, I think I understand that I can't create the Balance Sheet by Class report you show above on Pro, only Premier?

Backing up, our group functions much like a church - we are a homeschool organization with many activities we need to track balances for - Soccer, Choir, Chess Club - the groups need access to basic information:  how much money is sitting in "their" account/project/class (though our organization only has a checking and PayPal account).  They need to know how much came in through PayPal (and the name of who paid ideally), how much has gone out by check to pay for fields, music, renting church space, etc.

  We were using liability accounts as "ledgers" to track this, though obviously that money is NOT liability.  That prevented a P/L because money went into Liability accounts, and did not get categorized as Income and Expenses.  BUT it allowed us to run transaction details to show balances, credits and debits to each group - they could have a full report at any time.

Classes was suggested as the fix.  We could categorize Income with Class Soccer or a Payment as Expense, Class Choir.  But when I started to categorize in this way, I see the P/L looks good but doesn't give balances, and the Transaction Detail grouped by Class adds expenses in to the balance.  I don't know why.  They are subtracting in the bank accounts and in P/L.  I cannot find a report that shows me the balance which we like to provide monthly and should be able to access at any time before writing a check (to make sure the group the check is being paid out of has the funds to cover it)

I feel like our organization is so simple.  We want to know overall income and expenses to fill out our index card 990 or 990 EZ in years we exceed $50,000, and we want to easily categorize our activities and track their balances.  No loans, invoices, customers, accounts receivable, employees, etc.  This is like household level tracking where instead of needing to know how much I spent/have left to spend this year in grocery, insurance, home improvements, I need to know the balance/how much came in and left these activity groups.  I am really frustrated right now that there isn't an easy solution.

I'm posting this a couple places - this discussion is so recent and somewhat related so I'm trying here to see if someone has ideas to create an easy solution or workaround...?

qbteachmt · ‎October 15, 2018

"I'm posting this a couple places"

If you had simply started your Own Topic, not only would it all be in One Place, you would get the help you need specifically, not buried in other people's topics, and We wouldn't need to Chase your Questions in multiple places, to find it all the Same topic.
Please go Here, because I put a Lot of time into that response:
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://community.intuit.com/questions/1593772-journal-entries-for-beginning-account-balance-and-cla...>

We are Peer users that volunteer here. It helps to make it easy for us to help you. Thanks.

coordinator · ‎October 15, 2018

Sorry!

qbteachmt · ‎October 15, 2018

"as assets and liabilities are owned by the entity as a whole, not by the any segments "

Not For Profit organizations and Governmental account do, in fact, require Bal Sheet kept by Funds = Class.

To do this with QB Online that doesn't support Bal Sheet by Class, you can use the same functions as are used by QB Pro desktop users. Pro also doesn't not manage BS by Class.

You will make a Parent level of accounts where you need to track Class as Subaccounts and then you Never post to the parent. You do this for Bank and Credit Card, but Equity (Net Assets or Fund Balances) would not be attached as subaccounts. Like this:

Checking <== use only to Reconcile and make no entries here

Subaccounts: Restricted, Operating, Reserves, Program A, Program B <== everything happens here

There is a good book for this, that is based on QB desktop, but the concepts still apply to Online: Running QB for Not For Profit, by Kathy Ivens.

contactdavid · ‎October 15, 2018

I'm not sure who wrote this. It comes across as gobble de gook to me. QBs use of classes in the balance sheet could be so much simpler and not require the above inexplicable explanation. But it would require a modification to it - why don't QBs just do it?

Biggsie · ‎October 15, 2018

Agree with David. We all know there are many workarounds for the lack of true support for classes but that's not what we're after. Intuit could make this "just work" with a few focused sprints but they decide to invest elsewhere. Again, it's unfortunate.

Malcolm Ziman · ‎October 15, 2018

"Pro also doesn't not manage BS by Class." QBO DOES manage BS by class. There is is no "also"

qbteachmt · ‎October 15, 2018

Honestly, I am pointing out you can use the tools to meet your needs. "Lack of Support for classes" doesn't prevent you from using the tools to meet your needs. They are Tools.

qbteachmt · ‎October 15, 2018

I wrote it. If it is "gobble de gook" then I would be glad to Help, and I referred to a Book that also Helps. That's why we offer resources = to be Helpful. You have a tool = the QB Online Program. It might or might not be the Right Tool to meet your needs.

QB Desktop has a Premier program which handles what you are asking just fine. If you bought a Hammer and needed a Torque Wrench, you don't blame the tool.

However, I was offering to help you "make it work."

It might be New to you, of course. That is the point of Offering to help = showing people things that are New to them.

I will attach Two Images that help clarify my first response. For a File with Funds, the Banking can be handled as Subaccounts, instead of Class = Columns, when using a QB program that does not manage balance sheet by class.

Please see these two attachments from the Same Data file. It was originally using Pro, which is like your complaint = no Class for banking. Then, we moved it from Pro to Premier and now they have Class as Columns.

I hope that helps clarify my instructions for how you Also can make this work.

contactdavid · ‎October 15, 2018

Thanks QBTeachmt
Sorry if I was my usual 'blunt' self - I appreciate you are trying to help. The diagrams make sense. Your approach would help to some extent but would bring challenges to operations - our staff would have to change bank sub accounts every time there was a change in funding - unless I still have not understood you correctly. In any case we have given up on tracking the classes in the balance sheet using QBs - we do this separately drawing on the expense analysis - we then journal the figures into the right classes.

My main point is that QBs advertise that it supports classes but it dose not support it throughout all its facilities. It could easily amend the banking and expense handling routines to append the class analysis to the bank and cash account side of the transactions - instead it simply analyses them to 'Unclassified'. Using a set of complicated rules is counter intuitive for a company that calls itself Intuit. It seems to me that it makes a mockery of some of its claims in TV advertising.

Having said that - the package is workable and cheap - just want charities want - I just hope they correct this anomaly in due course.

Regards

David

83001 · ‎December 09, 2018

I'm having the same problem. Trying to reclassify balance sheet transactions by class - or assign a class so that the balance sheet report works. I've not found an answer and Quickbooks support did not have any answers.

Anonymous · ‎December 10, 2018

Greetings, @83001,

Thanks for joining the conversation. I want to make sure you're able to accomplish your task.

You may want to run through the entire conversation first, our prestigious contributors: Rustler, Qbteachmt and Malcolm Ziman, have shared a great discussion about how to track classes in QuickBooks and how it works with your financial reports. They also provided helpful workarounds for you!

Currently, QBO, unlike the Desktop version, does not track the Balance Sheet by Class. You can follow Qbteachmt's advise to create a Parent account where you can track classes as subaccounts. You can also customize the report to get the information you need. Let me guide you how:

Open the Balance Sheet Report.
Click the Customize button.
Select Filter.
Click the Class box.
Choose the classes you'd like to view from the Class drop-down.
Click Run report.
Update the report date.
In the Display column by drop-down, select Classes.
Click on Run report.

All this information should point you to the right track, @83001.

Please feel free to get in touch with the Community for all your QuickBooks questions. I'll be glad to lend a helping hand to you anytime. Have a good one!

pauch · ‎December 18, 2018

I'm am on QB Premier for NonProfits. My problem is that someone prior to me, setup multiple classes so much so that a balance sheet report is 20+pages when run by class and I only use 4 classes. Since it wouldn't be practical to change all transactions that feed into the excessive historical use of classifications, is there a way to start new. Can I reclassify balance sheet accounts with the start of a new year?

qbteachmt · ‎December 18, 2018

You can Merge Classes.

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