You Have Questions, We Have Answers

I just started to use QuickBooks and when I look at my chart of accounts I found an account called “Opening Balance Equity”. I did not create this account. How did it get there and what is it used for?  J.L. Marietta

The account “Opening Balance Equity” is not a General Accounting Practice account; it is an account that is generated by QuickBooks specifically for setting up specific accounts that will have a beginning balance. For instance: bank accounts, credit card accounts, mortgages and several other types of accounts. QuickBooks “assumes” that the brand new user may not know where to put the off-setting entry when setting up a bank account or other type of account with an existing beginning balance. It allows the user to get their accounts set up and begin using QuickBooks. Later, your CPA will come along and re-class those amounts to their proper place in your books. This account should always have a zero balance.  You should never post anything directly to this account.

I use “classes” to identify the different properties I have and also to separate Residential from Commercial properties.  I know how to generate an Income Statement by class.  I would also like to generate my Balance Sheet by class but I don’t see where in the list of reports that I can do that. Where do I go to generate that report? R.Y. Roswell

If you are using QuickBooks Pro you can run the Income statement by “class” but you cannot run a Balance Sheet by “class”.  If this is something that is very important to you and your business to see on a Balance Sheet you may want to upgrade to a Premier version of QuickBooks – the Premier version and above are the only ones that can run the Balance Sheet by “class”.

I have a father and son team working for me who have the same name but the son does not go by “junior” and does not want it on his pay checks. How can I make the “same name” different and still produce a legal check for the son?

You can append the word “SON” in curly brackets (“{}”) after the name of the “junior” payee name.  When you set him up in the file you will see a place in the set up window that says: “Print As” and has a window for you to type in the name how you want it to print on the check.

Of course the father may want to go with the designation of “Sr.” after his name and that will also solve the issue.

I have a sixteen year old part-time employee who has just applied for his Social Security card. He has been told he will receive the card in about 8 or more weeks.  I will have provided him with several pay checks by that time and am worried that when it is time to run W-2’s I still won’t have it for the file.  How do I handle this at that time?

When you set up the employee who has no Social Security number at that time you can enter 000-00-000 in the space where you would put the number – then the employee record will display “Applied For” as the social security number on the W-2 if it comes to that time.  If you receive the number prior to running the W-2’s then edit the employee’s record prior to printing.