Closing the Books

Hi @Luisa Nogueira,

Welcome to the Community. Let me help you close your books in QuickBooks Online.

Closing your books for the year prevent unwanted changes to your accounting data. Before doing so, I recommend reviewing your accounts and making sure the information is accurate.

For the linked accounts, I suggest matching them to the transactions in QuickBooks. It will help ensure your data matches what you have in the actual bank account.

Here's how:

1. On the left navigation, go to Banking.
2. Select the bank account.
3. Go to the For review tab.
4. Click the transaction.
5. Choose Find match. 
6. Match with the transaction in QuickBooks.
7. Hit Save.

After matching transactions and making sure everything is in QuickBooks, you can proceed with reconciling your accounts up to your closing date. I recommend downloading the statements from your bank to compare transactions easily during the process.

Also, make some adjustments to your inventory quantity on hand if necessary. Once done, you can close your books directly from the settings of your account.

You'll need an admin access to perform the action. Follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and then select Accounts and Settings.
2. Select the Advanced tab.
3. Select Edit ✎ in the Accounting section.
4. Select the Close the books checkbox.
5. Enter a closing date. Give yourself a comfortable deadline. You shouldn't need to edit any transactions before this date. Your new bookkeeping work will start after this point.
6. Select the Allow changes after viewing a warning and entering a password option from the drop-down menu if you want to require a password before editing your closed books.
   
7. Select Save and then Done.

For additional reference, you can use the following article to make changes to your closed books in QuickBooks: Edit your closed books. 

Drop me a comment below if you have any other questions related to closing books. I'll be happy to help you some more.

Thank you so much for your help.

So in order to proceed to the next year, I should match all the previous years transactions and reconcile the bank statements?

I have transactions since 2017.

Hi there, @Luisa Nogueira.

Yes. You'll have to review your transactions by matching and reconciling them. Although there are other ways to close your books, one example is by using Journal Entry. With this, I'd suggest contacting your accountant to ensure your books are accurate and to avoid issues in the future.

To know more about the reconciliation process, you can check out this article: Learn the reconcile workflow in QuickBooks.

I've added this article to help you with your future tasks with QuickBooks: QuickBooks Online year-end guide and checklist. This contains sub-articles to give more insights into the different types of processes.

Please let me know if you have other questions. I'd be happy to answer them for you. Take care.