How do I close out prior years and start afresh in 2020?

Thank you for taking the time to reach out to us here on the Community page, @regan-kevin1.

If you wish to close your books to lock past transactions, you can do this by following these steps:

1. Click on the Gear icon at the upper-right corner of the page, then select Account and Settings under Your Company.
2. Go to the Advanced tab at the left pane. 
3. Under the Accounting section, put a check-mark on the box beside Close books and enter the Closing Date.
4. Set whether or not a password is needed to change closed transactions.
5. Tap Save, then Done.

For additional information about closing books in QuickBooks Online (QBO), read this article: Close your books to lock past transactions.

On the other hand, if you wish to delete your data and start over fresh in 2020, check this link as your reference depending on how old your transactions are.

Keep me posted if you have any other questions. I'm always here to help however I can. Have a great day!

@regan-kevin1 

You can not, QB is perpetual so you can not start fresh.  To start fresh would require a new subscription

If you are using QBS Desktop; you can start a new company file and when setting up your Chart of Accounts; enter beginning balances OR do a JE to enter beginning balances of your Balance Sheet and put to Retained Earnings.

bank acct   dr - beg bal    cr - retained earnings

loans   cr - beg. bal.   dr. - retained earnings

I have done this many times for clients as they have done so many transactions wrong in their QBs file that it to messy to fix.  You will always have your old file for historical purposes.  If you are using QBS Online; I recommend downloading all your data into another software such as Excel and then starting a new company so you are not paying for two company files. 

I dont have a messy file issue, however after reconciling every month, the following month is always a mess. Things that where checked for reconciliation are no longer, is this a common issue with QBs

Thanks for joining on this thread, @Quckbooks concerns.

I've checked our reports about reconciling accounts in QuickBooks Online (QBO) but I didn't see any related to this. Let me give you some troubleshooting steps to resolve the reconciliation issue. 

First, I'd recommend checking your Bank register to check if the transaction status is C. If it's, then the transaction should have checked on the reconciliation page. 

See the sample screenshot below for your guidance:

Once confirmed and the issue persists, I'd advise logging in to your account through incognito. This way, we can check if it's a browser-related issue. 

Here are the keyboard shortcuts:

• Google Chrome: Ctrl + Shift + N
• Safari 11 or newer: ⌘ + Shift + N
• Mozilla Firefox: Ctrl + Shift + P
• Microsoft Edge: Ctrl + Shift + P

Once logged in, re-check the transaction if it's already checked to verify if it's now operating properly. If it's, please go back to your usual browser and clear the cache. So, it will speed up your overall browsing experience and fix other issues. Using other supported browsers is a good alternative too.

Additionally, you can always access Reconciliation Report to review all the reconcile data. Then customize it to show precise information. 

I've also encouraged you to access these articles about fixing reconciliation errors and other related topics. 

• Learn the reconcile workflow in QuickBooks
• Fix issues at the end of reconciliation in QuickBooks Online

Feel free to leave a message if you have further questions about reconciling in QBO. I'm glad to help you. Take care.

Thanks for your response,

im using QBDT for Mac. 
I reconciled January and February has been nothing but a pain. We have a small business and only access QB at the end of each month, however upon trying to reconcile our Debit accounts the balances don’t match and we can’t figure iut where the issue is. Which has been a persistent issue, just this time I can seen to fix it. 

thinking of using the online version but that may not fix the problem 

I can help you with fixing the discrepancy to continue reconciling your accounts, @Quckbooks concerns.

Here are some of the possible causes why your balance is of when trying to reconcile:

• Entered an incorrect ending balance at the start of the reconciliation.
• Someone edited or deleted transactions that were already reconciled
• There are missing or duplicate transactions in QuickBooks.
• Someone entered transactions into QuickBooks that haven't cleared your bank yet.
• There has an adjustment made to your last reconciliation with a journal entry.

Here's how to resolve it:

1. Make sure your opening and beginning balances, are correct.
2. Run a Reconciliation Discrepancy report to show any transactions that were changed since your last reconciliation. You can also generate a Transaction Detail report to see if any transactions changed.
3. Find any reconciliation adjustment.

Once you're done, you can now go back and finish reconciling your accounts.

See this reference for detailed guidance: Fix issues when you're reconciling in QuickBooks Desktop.

I'm always here if you need further help with reconciling your accounts. Take care and have a great rest of the day!

I am getting ready to close out a 12 year run on the same company file because I am getting tired of the regular corruption taking place. We have started a new company file but we are still wrapping up the old file to close on 12/31/2021.

The one question I currenty have is this...

1. Invoices created in 2021 using accrual. This means revenue was "recognized" from a tax perspective in 2021 for federal however, we file DOR (sales tax) using cash so I cannot back date the payments received without filing an amendment to DOR which is a pain.

2. Payments received in 2022.

Question(s):

How will I link the payment to the AR balance for the specific client and job given that I cannot recreate the invoice in the new file since it was already created in accrual method in 2021? I will have a number of outstanding balances like this to pull forward.

@groovit 

Which QB Desktop year version are you using? If you are using QBD 2019 or later version, utilize the Condense Data feature to remove transactions prior to 1/1/2021.

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@Fiat Lux - ASIA wrote:

@groovit 

Which QB Desktop year version are you using? If you are using QBD 2019 or later version, utilize the Condense Data feature to remove transactions prior to 1/1/2021.

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Quickbooks Desktop Enterprise Contractor 2022.

Thanks for the response. I guess I do not understand what the condense would do for me.

I would need to complete all 2021 transactions so I can close the 2021 year end for tax reporting. Once this is done, I will be left with account balances to forward to the new company file. Some of these will be rather simple but any accrual balance (payables or receivables especially) which will be settled in 2022 but reference a transaction in 2021 will be the issue. If I condense to remove past transactions, I am unclear how that will help resolve these situations and... what if I need to reference these transactions for historical or audit purposes?