I deleted the income accounts "billable expense income" and "sales of product income and it re-appeared. 1. Why? 2. How can I keep this from happening again?

Hi info65,

I'll be glad to help you hide the income accounts so they won’t reappear on the chart of accounts.

When you're trying to delete an account, it will not be removed on the chart of accounts, but it will be shown as "deleted". To hide those deleted accounts, you can filter the chart of accounts. Let me show you how.

   1. On the left panel, click Accounting.
   2. Click on the Gear icon above the ACTION column.
   3. Uncheck the box under Other.

Please feel free to see the screenshot below for your reference.

For your future reference, you can also read this article about the chart of accounts: Edit Your Chart of Accounts
   
Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any other questions. The QuickBooks Community Team is always here to help.

Thank you for your feedback, however I know how to "hide"/make an account inactive"  These accounts where made inactive and then re-appeared as active when re-opening.

Thank you for your response, however I do know how to make and account inactive/hide it.  I did this and the accounts re-appear as active when opening the QB program.  Also, do you know how to hid QB mandatory accounts?

Hello there, @info65.

Thanks for getting back to us. I'm here to help sorted this out so you can inactivate your account successfully. 

We haven't received any similar reports about this issue and it unusual for the system that the account is still activated when you've already inactivated it. 

For the meantime, let's perform the basic troubleshooting steps which is to open your browser in incognito/private mode. This mode doesn't use the existing cache data files to load a webpage. 

Here are the keyboard shortcuts to open a private browser: 

• Google Chrome: press Ctrl+Shift+N 
• Mozilla Firefox: press Ctrl+Shift+P 
• Internet Explorer: press Ctrl+Shift+P 
• Safari: press Command+Shift+N

If it works fine with the private browser, I suggest clearing your browser's cache to start fresh. The next time you log in to QuickBooks Online, your browser will download fresh copies of everything you see on each page. Any cache-related issues should be cleared up. 

If the issue still persists, I recommend calling our QuickBooks Online Support Team. They have additional tools to pull up your account and investigate this further. 

Here's how you can contact our phone support: 

1. Go to: Get help with QuickBooks Online.
2. Click the contact us link. 
3. Select the Search for something else, and type-in Customer Support. 
4. Click Search.
5. Scroll-down and click Get Phone Number. 

Lastly, I want to ensure I understand about QB mandatory accounts you're trying to hid, so I'd like to ask few more details to narrow things down.

Don't hesitate to leave a comment below by clicking the Reply button. Any details you can share for your follow-up question would help me understand the situation. 

I'm surprised QB hasn't received similar reports of this, because it happens constantly when we are building our clients' Chart of Accounts.  Is it a default account issue?  When we change the name slightly ('Reimbursable' instead of 'Billable'), the Billable Expense Income account is created again on the COA.  Same with Sales of Product Income.

Hello there, @M Corse.

Thank you for reaching out in the Community. I'd be happy to help share some additional inputs about editing or deleting an account in Chart of Accounts. 

QuickBooks Online creates default and special accounts according to your company preferences. Currently, most of these accounts can't be deleted or edited. However, for Sales of Product Income account type, like Billable Expense Income, you can delete it by merging them. 

Here's how:

1. On the left pane, select Accounting. 
2. Select Chart of Accounts.
3. Locate the account to be merged in the list.
4. From the ACTION column drop-down menu, select Edit.
5. In the Account dialog, change the name of the account to Services, or the name assigned to the Services income account.
6. Select Save and Close.
7. When prompted whether you want to merge the accounts, select Yes.

After that, the accounts are merged, and the original accounts can no longer be used.

For more details about deleting or editing accounts, I've included some articles for additional reference: 

• How to manage default and special accounts in the Chart of Accounts 
• Remove deleted accounts from reports 

Also, for additional help, feel free to reach out to our Customer Care support. They have the tools that can help you get this resolved in no time. 

Here's how: 

1. Go to https://help.quickbooks.intuit.com/en_US/contact.
2. At the top right, select your QuickBooks version.
3. Select a topic.
4. Click on the Get Phone Number or Start a Message button.

These resources should help to get you on the right track.

Keep me posted if you have any other questions about deleting accounts in QuickBooks Online. I'll be happy to help you further. 

@MaryGraceS I have also tried merging, and QBO creates the accounts again with "-1" after the name.

Hi again, @M Corse.

Thank you for the quick response. I'd be happy to help get this taken care of today.

To start, let's check the Audit Log to verify the changes and who made the account. If it's QuickBooks, the user will show as System Administrator.

Here's how: 

1. At the top right, click the Gear icon. 
2. Select Audit Log.
3. Select the Filter button.
4. Use the fields on the Filter panel to choose the appropriate User, Date, or Events filter to narrow the results.
5. Select Apply.

For more details, you can also check this article: Audit Log.

After that, I recommend contacting our phone support to assist you further. They have the tools to determine what's causing the issue and help you get back to business in no time.

To reach them, please refer to the steps I provided above.  

That should point you in the right direction today.

Please don't hesitate to let me know how the call goes or if you have other questions about QuickBooks Online. I'll be happy to help you out. 

I keep trying to mark the "billable expense income" account inactive but it keeps reappearing. Just like with the other person. So you all have heard it from at least two totally separate people. Can someone fix this issue?

Hi iammediallc,

The Billable Expense Income account is one of the special accounts that QuickBooks creates when a certain feature is turned on in the settings (e.g. the Make expenses and items billable feature.)

You can delete this account by merging it to the "Services Income account".

Here's how:

1. Click Gear, and the Chart of Accounts.
2. Locate the account to be merged in the list.
3. From the Action column, click the drop-down arrow and choose Edit.
4. In the Account dialog, change the name of the account to "Services", or the name assigned to the "Services income account".
5. Select Save and Close.
6. When prompted whether you want to merge the accounts, select Yes.

You might want to check out this article about: How to manage default and special accounts in the Chart of Accounts.

You can always swing by anytime in the Community space if you have other questions. We're here to help.

It happens because it was selected at an expense this is a billable expense.

This is what I think is happening:

This account is linked to some feature of QBO, and has something written to it at some point OR mapped to it. I'd run report for all dates, figure out what is hitting this account / move it, and then use the merging technique described above.

An example: A product or service is mapped to the account (even if the product or service is inactive). Do a pass of your products and services list (including inactive) to ensure that none of these things are mapped to this account. Make P&S item active, move CoA mapping, and then ensure this mapping had no entries tied to the CoA item. Merge with something else.

Hopefully this helps.

Like many have stated already - its extremely frustrating that QBO automatically creates accounts that you are NOT able to make inactive.

When we do make those accounts inactive - it goes away for moment but then a new account is recreated. I've merged accounts & renamed account & still a new one is still created. 

I understand that "billable expense income" is tied to a Product & Services that was created. I DID NOT CREATE that product or service either and cannot make that service Inactive either. So now I have accounts appearing on my reporting that

- I did not create

- that I can't make inactive or delete

- that I cannot make any changes to make it not appear in reports (customization in reports also does not work for this).

Please fix these seemingly simple issues of QBO program.

This isn't the impression we want you to have, mroch.

I understand your frustration, and know your desire to delete any default and special accounts that aren't essential to your business operations.

Depending on the business entity you chose when creating your company in QuickBooks Online, specific default accounts in your chart of accounts are created for you. Some of these accounts are linked to particular QBO features that will begin to appear the moment you turn it on.

The Billable Expense Income can be remove by merging only to the Service Income account. It's possible there still products linked to this account, which is why they continue to appear even after the merge.

When running report QuickBooks uses the source and target concept. Source is a transaction's executive summary. It includes all of the source data (source account, source name, source memo and source amount, etc.). Targets include complete target data and extensive information about the transaction (target accounts, target names, target memos, target amounts, etc.).

If you want to remove default and special account on your report, you'll have the option to export your report to Excel. From there, you can customize it based on your preference. For further details, see the following article: Export your reports to Excel from QuickBooks Online.

Don't hesitate to post again if you need anything else. I'll be here to help you.

I have tried to merge, but doesn't work because it is still linked to a default services account - that I did not want or add either. These default products & services items I am unable to make inactive as well. Or I have merged in the past and then it pops up again later.

Yes - I already export reports all the time to make simple edits because QBO can't filter out unwanted default accounts. If I was able to customize the report in QBO and filter out those accounts it would make everything 10x easier. But for some reason the accounts I did not want, I did not set up, and that I cannot make inactive are also unable to be filtered.

What is most aggravating is there isn't an option to just create a BLANK QB company when you create it. You are forced to pick certain items based on how your company operates and then QB gives you default accounts that are not needed. I have asked QB customer support all the time about this and I'm told it doesn't exist because QB wants to recommend accounts and services to you. I've used QB for over 10 years for several companies and I have not once every used any of the default accounts it gives you. 

The fact this software is online and is very customizable but then has default items not able to removed is extremely irritating. Why doesn't QB allow a blank company for someone to build 100% on their own?

This also makes the automatic reporting (a great QBO feature) unusable as I always have to export and edit accounts out of the report. It's such an unnecessary burden. 

I'd love QBO to do a survey and ask all its customers if they have ever used a default account QBO gives them - I would assume the number of people who use it is very low.

Hi,

I am new to QBO and know exactly what you mean, I have customised my chart of accounts and make some inactive, no sales in these or expenses, no links at all but still keep reappearing.

I like a clean look to see only what I need.

I have merged Sales Of Product Income with my custom Product Sales , it shows as a sub name, not what I really want, I rather not see it, just made inactive, will see if it shows up again.

Thanks

I am using the new Quickbooks Ledger. Ledger does not even allow Billable Expenses and it does not allow Invoicing. I see this thread began in 2019. Looks like Intuit is stumped or not interested. I have numerous Billable Expense Income accounts. Happens when I change a name, when I change the Type from Product Sales to Services, and probably something else I tried. I am considering exporting to my QB Desktop, purging the QB Ledger account, and re-importing. I see that QB Online in general has this problem. I think the rollout of Ledger was pre-mature; likely no beta-testing.

Thank you for joining the thread, Donald90630. I appreciate putting your voice out and sharing it in our forums.

As we value your suggestions, I recommend sending your feedback to our Product Development Team. They will carefully review your suggestions and determine which features should be added to QuickBooks Ledger for future product enhancements. We take all user feedback seriously and use it to continually improve our product.

Here's how:

1. Go to the Gear icon at the top, then select Feedback.
2. Type in your feedback or product suggestions.
3. Click Next to submit feedback.

You can also send and track your feedback by going to the following link: QuickBooks Online Feature Requests.

Additionally, I'll be sharing these resources that will guide you in managing and tracking your client's account in QuickBooks:

• Add clients to QuickBooks Online Accountant.
• Manage clients in QuickBooks Online Accountant.

I appreciate you taking the time to provide us with your feedback. If there is anything else I can assist you with regarding your QuickBooks Ledger account or any other matter, please don't hesitate to let me know. I am available and ready to help in any way I can.