list entry

How Do I Resort Lists?

Chief Mechanic · September 11, 2010 ·

Lists are one of the foundations of QuickBooks, and from time to time they can become out of order. That’s when they need to be resorted. Some common indicators that it’s time to resort your lists include:

the list itself is out of order
an element is missing
new entries in a list appear at the top of the list instead of in their sorted order
you can’t turn on the account number preference
selecting a Customer:Job, Vendor, or Employee in a Center fails to display existing transactions for that name
Names don’t properly auto-fill when entering a Name filter on the Advanced tab of the Edit->Find… function

Resorting any list will undo any special order you’ve applied to the list, and this activity can’t be done in multi-user mode. It’s always a good idea to backup your company file before undertaking an action that can’t be undone.

There are 8 lists that can be resorted. They are:

Customers:Jobs
Vendors
Employees
Other Names
Accounts
Items
Memorized Reports
Memorized Transactions

Since this technique is often used to address possible data corruption, we’ll outline the most efficient technique to resort multiple lists, but you can also choose to resort an individual list by opening up a Center and right clicking on a list element.

The first 4 lists are collectively referred to as Names or Entities, and there’s an easy way to resort these 4 lists:

Open the Write Checks window by clicking on Banking->Write Checks or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + W
In the Pay to the Order of field, click Ctrl + L
Opt to include inactive list entries by clicking the Include Inactive checkbox
Click the Name button and choose Re-sort List from the menu
Click Ok to resort the lists
Uncheck the Include Inactive checkbox

The screenshot below shows the combined Name list in Step 4:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Resort Name List

Our related article explains how to provide easy access to this combined list of all Names.

Resorting the Chart of Accounts and Items lists follow similar procedures, except each of these lists will have to be resorted individually. To access the Chart of Accounts, click the Lists->Chart of Accounts menu selection or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + A. To access the Items list, click Lists->Items. Opt to include inactive list entries, resort the list from the button in the lower left of the window, and uncheck the Include Inactive checkbox before proceeding to the next list.

Resorting Memorized Reports and Memorized Transactions are similar to the above steps, except there’s no need to include inactive list entries since they’re not allowed on these lists. To access Memorized Reports, click the Reports->Memorized Reports->Memorized Report List menu selection; to access Memorized Transactions, click Lists->Memorized Transactions or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + T.

After resorting lists, close and reopen your company file (.qbw) to insure that all changes are successfully written to disk.

Resorting lists is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

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How Can I Display a List of All Names?

Chief Mechanic · September 5, 2010 ·

In QuickBooks, Customers, Customer:Jobs, Vendors, and Employees are called Names. In transaction entry screens, the selection of a Name is filtered to include only the type of Names normally associated with that transaction type. For example, when entering a Vendor Bill, the selection of a Name is filtered to only include Vendors.

Sometimes, it’s helpful to be able to review a list of all Names in one place, especially when trying to follow a consistent pattern if an entity appears on more than 1 list.

To display a list of all Names, follow these simple steps:

Open the Write Checks window by clicking on the Banking->Write Checks menu selection or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + W
In the Pay to the Order of field (ie, the check payee), use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + L to display a list of all Names
Add the Name List window to the Icon Bar by clicking on the View->Add “Name List” to Icon Bar… menu selection
Assign a Label and Description to the new window
Optionally, change the default icon selection that will appear in the Icon Bar to represent the Name List
Click Ok

You now have a list of all Names in an easy-to-access window. The list provides a consolidated window of 4 pieces of information: Active Status, Name, Name Type, and Balance Total.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Name List

Note that the Write Checks window was used to access all Names because a check can be written to all of the different Name types and by-passes the filtering set by QuickBooks on different transaction types.

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Can I Merge 2 General Ledger Accounts?

Chief Mechanic · September 5, 2010 ·

You can merge two General Ledger (GL) accounts in QuickBooks, but there are a few important considerations:

merging accounts can only be performed in single-user mode;
the reconciliation status of each transaction in a balance sheet account is preserved in the merge;
once you merge 2 accounts, you can’t reverse or undo it;
you can only merge 2 accounts in a single step;
both accounts must be on the same hierarchical level if you’d like to merge accounts based on the account name;
both accounts being merged must be of the same type; and
neither account involved in the merge can be mapped to a 1099 category.

To merge one account with another, start with the account that you want to remove from your GL chart of accounts and edit that account.

You can change either the name or the account number of the account being removed to match the name or the account number of the account into which the account will be merged.

If you are merging one account into another by editing the account number, you’ll see this window:

If you’re merging by editing the account name, you’ll see this window:

Remember that merging based on name only works for accounts that are on the same hierarchical level. If you change the name of a top-level account to match that of a sub-account, you won’t be asked if you want to merge the accounts because they’re not on the same hierarchical level. Instead, you’ll end up with a top-level account with a name that is identical to a sub-account.

For balance sheet accounts, the reconciliation status of each transaction in the account being removed will be transferred to the destination account, so that any unreconciled transactions in the account being removed will remain unreconciled after the merge. Therefore, before you merge accounts, consider the impact on reconciling the destination account after the merge, which will then include the transactions from both accounts. Often, performing a reconciliation is easier when there are fewer transactions to reconcile.

Merging accounts is also discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

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