QuickBooks Tip – Merging Duplicate Items and/or Accounts

Merging duplicate items and/or accounts in QuickBooks is preferable to making journal entries.

It is a common occurrence over time, especially if you have had numerous bookkeepers; to discover that you have duplicate items in your QuickBooks Item List or accounts in your Chart of Accounts.

Rather than performing journal entries to move the money all into one account and then making the duplicate account inactive – it’s easy to merge the two accounts together.

BEFORE you attempt this procedure – make a backup of your QuickBooks company data file and run any necessary year to date reports for comparison after the merge.

Let’s say, for example, in your Chart of Accounts you have an account called Delivery and another one called Postage & Delivery; you’ve decided that you want all of the dollars you spend tracked under the Postage & Delivery account.

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Edit the “Delivery” account (Chart of Accounts -> right-click on Delivery -> choose Edit Account); changing the Account Name to Postage and Delivery and the number to 6610.

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When you are finished editing, click the Save & Close button.  QuickBooks will display a message box indicating that the account number is already being used and asks if you would like to merge them.  Select Yes.

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The two accounts are now merged into one.

This same procedure can be utilized for duplicate customers, vendors, items, etc.