QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Hiding and Deleting Accounts

If you create an account by mistake, you can delete it. However, because QuickBooks drops your financial transactions into account buckets and you don't want to throw away historical information, you'll usually want to hide accounts that you don't use anymore. You don't delete your Nutrition Service account just because you've discontinued your nutrition consulting service to focus on selling your new book, The See Food Diet. The income you earned from that service in the past must remain in your records.

Hiding Accounts

The records of past transactions are important, whether you want to review the amount of business you've received from a customer or the IRS is asking unsettling questions. Hiding accounts doesn't mean you withhold key financial information from prying eyes. When you hide an account, the account continues to hold your historical transactions, but account lists in QuickBooks no longer display it, so you can't choose it by mistake with a misplaced mouse click.

Hiding and reactivating accounts, demonstrated in Figure 2-5, also comes in handy when you use QuickBooks' pre-defined Charts of Accounts, explained on page 31. If QuickBooks overwhelms you with accounts you don't think you need, hide the accounts for the time being. When you find yourself saying, "Gosh, I wish I had an account for the accumulated depreciation of vehicles,"the solution might be as simple as reactivating a hidden account.

Deleting Accounts

You can delete an account only ...