QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual

Hiding and Deleting List Entries

Deleting entries is only for discarding entries that you create by mistake. If you’ve already used list entries in transactions, hide the entries you don’t use anymore so your historical records are complete. For example, you wouldn’t delete the “Net 30” payment term just because you’re lucky enough to have only Net 15 clients right now; you may still extend Net 30 terms to some clients in the future.

Hiding Entries

Hiding list entries that you no longer use does two things:

• Your previous transactions still use the entries you’ve hidden, so your historical records don’t change.

• When you create new transactions, the hidden entries don’t appear in drop-down lists, so you can’t choose an old entry by mistake.

The methods for hiding and reactivating list entries are exactly the same regardless of which list you’re working on:

• Hide an entry. In the list’s window or the list in the Vendor Center, right-click the entry and choose “Make <list name> Inactive” from the shortcut menu, where <list name> is the list that you’re editing. The entry disappears from the list.

• View all the entries in a list. At the bottom of the list’s window, turn on the “Include inactive” checkbox so you can see both active and hidden entries. (In the Vendor Center, in the View drop-down list, choose All Vendors.) QuickBooks adds a column with an X as its heading and displays an X in that column for every inactive entry in the list.

• Reactivate an entry. First, view all the entries, and ...