Based on my accounts advice I set up a billable expense account in expenses.
But have since moved to using Billable expenses as per Manager guides, and it works very well.
however I still have an amount in the old billable expenses that shows up in the profit and loss.
When i click on this amount it shows the dates and amounts but thats all.
I would like to delete the old expense account so it doesn’t inadvertently get used in the future.
I can’t see how to delete these amounts, is a journal entry the way to go, but not sure which other account to use to balance the entry.
Any help would be appreciated.
The old expense account can be deleted, but not until every transaction within it is deleted. This is true even if the balance is zero from billing out all the expenses to customers and being reimbursed. The purpose of this behavior by Manager is so you don’t delete actual financial records.
You have two choices. You can bill out everything from that account, and credit back your reimbursements, eventually reducing the balance to zero. Then perhaps add something such as OBSOLETE to the account name to remind you not to use it.
If you haven’t gone too far, you can go back to all expense transactions in the account and re-allocate them to Billable expenses. Next, you will have to recreate every invoice on which you billed any of those expenses to customers. (Make careful records in advance so you don’t get yourself into trouble by forgetting anything.) Create the replacement sales invoices from the Customers tab, following the Guides. You will be able to edit invoice numbers and everything else to duplicate your previous invoices. You will probably have to delete payments against the old invoices before you can delete them.
You probably get the picture: unravel the entire string of inter-related transactions and redo them using the new account structure.
While you are at it, consider whether you want to use Billable Time, because you may have to go through a similar process. All this points out the huge value of thinking through your chart of accounts and accounting workflow before you start using Manager.
Another way around this mess is to create an entirely new company. (You can have as many as you want.) Rebuild your accounting history using the new chart of accounts. When you are satisfied that everything matches what you did before, you can remove the old company. Companies can be renamed at will to avoid confusion during the process.
Thanks Tut, for your advice. I have now set up a dummy company in which I try out things first.
I wish i had done when I started using Manager it would have save considerable time.
Thanks again