Chart of Accounts: The ABCs

The Chart of Accounts shows the name and type of each account in your company.

When you set up your company file, QuickBooks sets up certain accounts for you automatically. As your business grows or changes, you can add new accounts to your Chart of Accounts to better organize your finances. For example you might want to create expense accounts to track office supply purchases separately from advertising costs.

More about types of QuickBooks accounts

The Chart of Accounts lists the name of each account, the type of account, and the balance. If the account shows a blue dot ( online banking on) in the last column, then online banking is enabled for that account.

To open the Chart of Accounts:

  1. Choose Lists > Chart of Accounts.

Use the Chart of Accounts to manage all of your QuickBooks accounts. Balance sheet accounts show the account balance of all transactions you've entered. Income and expense accounts do not show balances.

  • Add an account. Click + at the bottom of the Chart of Accounts and enter information for the account.
    New
  • Edit an account. Select the account name, click Edit at the bottom of the Chart of Accounts, then change information for the account.
    Edit
  • Open the register for an account. Double-click the name of an account to open the register. Or click Open Register at the bottom of the Chart of Accounts.

  • Show only active or inactive accounts. Use the View menu at the bottom of the Chart of Accounts to change the view to show only Active Accounts or Inactive Accounts. To make an account active or inactive, edit the account and check or uncheck “Inactive.” Or Control-click the account name and choose Make Account Inactive or Make Account Active.
  • Reorder the accounts in the list. On the Action ( Action menu) menu, be sure Enable Custom Ordering is checked. Then you can drag and drop account names where you want them to appear in the list. When Enable Custom Ordering is unchecked, the list uses the default ordering of account names.
  • Change the view. By default, QuickBooks lists accounts in a hierarchy. Click the arrow beside an account name to view its subaccounts. You can also choose Flat View from the Action menu ( Action menu) which lists each entry as the account name plus any subaccount name. You can change the view by selecting Hierarchical View or Flat View from the Action menu.

Try these tips and tricks to make using the Chart of Accounts even easier.

  • Customize the color of an account type. Double-click any account name that is the type you want to change. Then choose Edit > Change Account Color.
  • Sort information by clicking a the column titles.
  • Rearrange the columns by clicking and dragging the top of a column to move it to another location.
  • Select multiple names in one of these ways:
    • Shift-click to select a range of names. Select the first name you want, hold down the Shift key, and then select the last name in the range.
    • Command-click to select a group of nonadjacent names. Select a name, hold down the Command key ( Command Key), and then select each additional name.
    • Command-A to select all names. No need to click; just press Command-A to select the entire list.
  • Control-click an account name to access a shortcut menu to common tasks.

    Shortcut menu

Chart of Accounts

A complete list of a business's accounts. The accounts that appear on the balance sheet are called “balance sheet accounts.” Other accounts track particular kinds of expenses or income.

Account

QuickBooks uses this term in the conventional accounting sense: it's a grouping of records for tracking and reporting purposes. The accounts that appear on the balance sheet are called “balance sheet accounts.” Other accounts track particular kinds of expenses or income. The complete list of accounts is called the “chart of accounts.”

There are two types of accounts—balance sheet accounts, such as checking and savings, and accounts used to group transactions for reporting purposes, such as income and expense accounts.