QBDT 2019 P&L Reports showing only invoiced charges

@Scribo  "--and therefore misses any income that is received without being first charged."

Can you expand on what you mean by this?

QB sources its income from transactions involving income accounts with variations based on Cash v. Accrual basis accounting.

If your 'received but not charged' income does not use income accounts in some way, then it won't be recognized as income. How are you entering these transactions?

Hi FishingForAnswers,

I got kicked off the Community for some reason while I was trying to reply to your helpful response. So now I have new User ID. Thanks for your response. Based upon what you said, I guess I am using an incorrect account for payments received. I am using an "Other Asset" account set up by a former bookkeeper. Is there same way to change it to an income account. It won't let me do it by just editing the account. Thank you.

@ScriboDT  That's not unusual for this website; QB and internet cookies and cache have an allergic kind of relationship.

From your description, it sounds like the former bookkeeper set up the Other Asset as a 'pass-through' account for the purpose of recognizing pre-payments on work yet to be done.

I think the right way to go about resolving this will depend a bit on whether you are Cash or Accrual, but if I'm being honest here, none of my clients are large enough scale to have encountered your situation so I'm not as familiar with it as I would like.

So, I'll have to opt out here. That said, there are some other, more experienced users still on this board that may see this thread and chime in.

For instance, if I recall, @Rainflurry  was in the process of preparing for the CPA exam and @BigRedConsulting  seems to have worked in this field for quite some time.

@ScriboDT 

Just to confirm, you're receiving prepayments and, instead of recognizing them as deferred revenue, you need to recognize them as income?  Let me know if I'm understanding that correctly.  You're on cash basis, yes?  A prepayment shouldn't go to an asset account because the cash received is an asset, so if you assign an asset account to the payment received, it will record a negative asset amount to offset the positive cash received.  

In QB Desktop, set up a Prepayment or Deposit Received Service/Other Charge item.  Select your desired income account under 'Account' in the item set up.  Then, assign that item to the invoice issued for the prepayment.  When you want to apply the prepayment to a future invoice, add the Prepayment/Deposit Received item to the invoice as a negative amount. 

This is one area where QB Online works better than QB Desktop.  In Online, you can just Receive Payment from the customer and, if there's no invoice issued for the payment received, it will automatically book the payment to income on cash basis.  The payment also remains as an A/R credit on accrual basis so you can easily apply it to a future invoice.     

Yes, Cash basis.

Is there a way to change the asset account to an income account or retroactively correct the old transactions in the asset account?

@ScriboDT 

"Is there a way to change the asset account to an income account or retroactively correct the old transactions in the asset account?"

Were the payments received using an item on an invoice?  If so, you should be able to update the 'Account' on the item and select the desired income account.  QB will ask you if you want to update existing transactions.  If you select 'Yes', QB will update all historical transactions that used that item.  Be careful if any of the transactions are in previous, closed periods. 

If the other current asset account was assigned to the deposit of the prepayments, then I believe you need to go through and change them one at a time.    

Thanks for your help. The problem arose because the P&L wasn't showing any income that wasn't invoiced or entered as Statement Charges, so some of the transactions in the asset account are not related to any invoice or statement charge. I have been recording deposits by showing transfers from the "All Income" asset account to bank accounts. So, it sounds like I need to go back and re-enter payments as received into an income account, one at a time. Ugh.

I am being asked, "Did [this process] solve my problem." Well, as often happens with Quickbooks, I found an answer to my question and the answer is "you can't do that." So, while my problem wasn't solved, I did get an answer that will prevent me from continuing to look for a solution that doesn't exist. That is a type of solution, even if it wasn't the one I was hoping for. I created and maintained a network of software processes for a business for over 30 years, and if something wasn't working in the most efficient manner, I would take a weekend and tweak whatever needed tweaking to make it more efficient. I miss that ability to fix things in commercial software. These companies ask for suggestions for improvements, but those suggestions just go into some trash can while the programmers keep coming out with updates and fixes that never seem to include the user suggestions I have seen and agreed with. Such is life.