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Troubleshooting QuickBooks Issues

If you need help troubleshooting QuickBooks issues, these tips from BuildYourNumbers.com might help! We offer job costing tutorials for QuickBooks & more.


Troubleshooting QuickBooks Issues

QuickBooks & Enterprise Solutions are, generally speaking, stable, logical, and powerful programs.

Troubleshooting QuickBooksWhen something isn’t working properly, however, it’s very easy to lose perspective and get upset or angry with the software.

In my experience, the problem only occasionally lies with the software itself. In most cases, the problem is in the system design or due to an operator error or misunderstanding.

When you experience “strange results,” please take the time to understand and research the problem before troubleshooting QuickBooks. The following information (and more in blogs to come!) discusses some of the more common problems my construction clients have encountered.

Coping When Report Results Don’t Agree

If, for example, your profit and loss total doesn’t agree with the net income shown in your balance sheet equity section, follow these steps.

  1. Check to see that both reports cover the same period. For example, if you run a profit and loss report for the month of August, the total will not agree with the amount shown as net income in the equity portion of your balance sheet because that line shows year-to-date totals.
  2. Verify that both reports were prepared based on the same method of accounting. To check, from the report window, click on Modify Report, and look at the Report-basis buttons. If one report has been prepared using cash basis and the other report using accrual basis, they will almost never agree with each other.

QuickTip from Diane

This happens most frequently when you access a memorized report that is set to prepare reports in one mode, while your file preferences are set to prepare reports in the other mode.

I recommend that you set all your reports to run as accrual-basis due to the unpredictability of cash-basis report results.

If you have conflicting settings, check both your company preferences in the Reports and Graphs section and the background settings in your memorized reports. Modify your settings, as warranted.

Regards – Diane Gilson


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