Created Bills are automatically coded to Employee Expense Payable instead of Accounts Payable.

jonathan-storyla · ‎December 28, 2020

Hi, I'm creating bills that are being coded to "Employee Expense Payable" instead of "Accounts Payable." Ex. The bill created would be a Dr. Expense and a Cr. to "Employee Expense Payable" when it should be "Accounts Payable". I'm not sure how to fix this and where I could edit the vendor to prevent this. Thank you in advance for your help!

JasroV · ‎December 30, 2020

You got it right, @jonathan-storyla.

To use the default Accounts Payable (A/P) account, you’ll want to merge your 2005 Employee Expense Payable account with the default one or inactive it.

We don’t recommend having two (2) A/P account as this make the system unorganized resulting in funds posting to the wrong one. Moving forward, I suggest maintaining one A/P account as well as an Accounts Receivable (A/R) account to prevent any issues in the future.

To learn more about A/R and A/P account, you can refer to this article for complete guidance: How to group Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable account types.

Nevertheless, here’s how to merge your accounts:

Go to the Accounting menu.
Select Chart of Accounts.
Locate your 2005 Employee Expense Payable account.
Select the drop-down menu beside the View register link under the Action column and select Edit.
Change the Name of the account to 2000 Accounts Payable (make sure the balance is $0 and that there are no sub-accounts when merging the two accounts).
Click Save, then select Yes to confirm the changes.

You can also utilize this link for the complete details: Merge duplicate accounts, customers, and vendors in QuickBooks Online

I also suggest working with your accountant for additional guidance. This way, we can guarantee your account is well accounted for after merging. If you’re not affiliated with one, visit our ProAdvisor page and we’ll help you find one from there.

Additionally, you can also check your Audit log and see who made some changes to your account. When everything looks good, you might want to read through this article that can guide you through the steps in reconciling your accounts effectively: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online.

In case you have other concerns or questions in supervising your accounts, tag me in your reply. I’d be more than happy to work with you again. Have a great day ahead and happy holidays!

View solution in original post

Jen_D · ‎December 28, 2020

Thanks for posting this billing concern, @jonathan-storyla,

I want to make sure I'm clear about the problem. Are these bills imported from an outside source? I'm asking this because bills created within QBO are posted by default to the Accounts Payable.

If this is indeed from another app or source, you can delete the transactions and import them again. Anything transferred into the company file is determined by how the transactions are mapped before they are brought in. See this link to learn more about deleting entries in the program: Void or delete transactions in QuickBooks Online

To import from other apps, you can choose connector or importer tools from our website. Check out this link to find the best tool for you: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/app/apps/home/

However, if it was created within the program and posted incorrectly, you can delete and recreate. You can create a new bill by going to the + New icon and selecting Bill.

If it's giving the same problem, try using a private window and see if the bill is posted properly to A/P. Sometimes, browser issues can affect functions within QuickBooks. This is because the cache will constantly overwrite itself without deleting the old stuff.

The private window will not save any history making it a good place to identify browser problems. To open an incognito browser, use these keyboard shortcuts:

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

If it works, clear the browser's cache. This will help delete the history of the browser, so you can start in a clean slate.

Kindly update me on how it goes. I want to make sure everything is working fine when processing bills in QBO.

jonathan-storyla · ‎December 28, 2020

Hi Jen,

Thank you for your response. Yes, the bills are being entered manually and are not imported from an outside source. What you listed is one of the ways we enter a bill into QB online. I just tried it again as well as clear the browser's cache (and private browser) and no luck :( . I attached an image on what's in the chart of accounts. And when creating a bill, it still goes to "Employee Expense Payable (2005)."

That's where I got the idea to try and make the account inactive, but I'm also unable to do that (even when I net-zeroed the account).

JessT · ‎December 28, 2020

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for doing the steps that Jen shared.

I agree with Jen that QBO has a default A/P account where all bills post, and it can't be inactivated even having a zero balance. You also have an option to add more A/P accounts, but all the bills will always post to the default one. Aside from that. the additional A/P accounts can be inactivated, unlike the default one.

Therefore, in your case, the default A/P account was renamed as Employee Expense Payable (2005).

You can rename the additional A/P first. Then, rename the default A/P as Accounts Payable after.

Let me know if you have other questions in mind.

jonathan-storyla · ‎December 30, 2020

Hi Jess,

So I can't inactivate that account because it's listed as the default? How do I change it so that the original A/P account is the default?

Meaning, how do I change back to the default 2000 A/P account? Because if it was renamed, somebody must've also renamed the account code, but that can't be the case since the 2000 A/P code already exists and has activity from prior months.

This is a strange occurrence because it's always been coded to 2000 Accounts Payable but it suddenly started changing to the 2005 account.

JasroV · ‎December 30, 2020

You got it right, @jonathan-storyla.

To use the default Accounts Payable (A/P) account, you’ll want to merge your 2005 Employee Expense Payable account with the default one or inactive it.

We don’t recommend having two (2) A/P account as this make the system unorganized resulting in funds posting to the wrong one. Moving forward, I suggest maintaining one A/P account as well as an Accounts Receivable (A/R) account to prevent any issues in the future.

To learn more about A/R and A/P account, you can refer to this article for complete guidance: How to group Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable account types.

Nevertheless, here’s how to merge your accounts:

Go to the Accounting menu.
Select Chart of Accounts.
Locate your 2005 Employee Expense Payable account.
Select the drop-down menu beside the View register link under the Action column and select Edit.
Change the Name of the account to 2000 Accounts Payable (make sure the balance is $0 and that there are no sub-accounts when merging the two accounts).
Click Save, then select Yes to confirm the changes.

You can also utilize this link for the complete details: Merge duplicate accounts, customers, and vendors in QuickBooks Online

I also suggest working with your accountant for additional guidance. This way, we can guarantee your account is well accounted for after merging. If you’re not affiliated with one, visit our ProAdvisor page and we’ll help you find one from there.

Additionally, you can also check your Audit log and see who made some changes to your account. When everything looks good, you might want to read through this article that can guide you through the steps in reconciling your accounts effectively: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online.

In case you have other concerns or questions in supervising your accounts, tag me in your reply. I’d be more than happy to work with you again. Have a great day ahead and happy holidays!

jonathan-storyla · ‎January 06, 2021

Oh my goodness! Thank you Jasro for your help in this! This worked!

Thank you also to everyone else who helped trying to solve this problem :) I appreciate it!

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Created Bills are automatically coded to Employee Expense Payable instead of Accounts Payable.