QB Desktop - P&L Report - showing a (\n) as part of the COA Description

It's nice to see you again in the Community, Mary.

I've got some information I'm sure you'll find helpful regarding the data showing on your P&L report.

Your account list may be corrupted that's why you're seeing odd behavior in your Chart of Accounts list. You can easily fix this using the Re-sort lists feature in QuickBooks Desktop.

Here's how:

1. Go to Lists menu then click Chart of Accounts.
2. Be sure that all accounts are included by selecting the Show Inactive Accounts. Just click the drop-down arrow for Account to show this option.
3. Select Re-sort List.
4. Select OK on the Are you sure you want to return this list to its original order? prompt.

You can also do this to other lists such as customers, vendors, employees, and others. You can check this article for more information: Re-sort lists.

Doing this will restore the accounts to its proper order and show the correct amounts for wages.

Please feel free to reach out to us here with all of your questions and concerns, I'm determined to ensure your success. Thanks for coming to the Community, best wishes.

Good morning and thanks for the reply!

I spent a good part of yesterday picking apart the data (fun :) ).  It seems like my issue is the following when one compares a Cash versus and Accrual P&L report:
1) If you enter a bill, with multiple line items (different GL accounts), through invoices and pay it in FULL in the same month you will see no difference on line items in the P&L reports between a cash and accrual; However, if you do the same as 1) and only pay a PARTIAL amount of the invoice, the amount that wasn't paid will be deducted or allocated (I think pro-rata) among all of the GL accounts that were hit on the invoice.  This leads to some visual inconsistencies on a cash P&L report - for example say you had:

 a) an invoice for $100 that was split into 3 different GL accounts ($75 - wages, $20- health care, $5 -dental); 

b) you paid $95 towards the invoice - the $5 that wasn't paid get's deducted across all GL accounts within the invoice - which make sense in the long run because you are not choosing which line items get paid.

So, it's the report isn't really totaling incorrectly.  It's the way that some things, invoices with multiple GL accounts - w/o using classes, need to be entered differently so that that can't happen!

Mary