Using the Inter Account Transfer tab, I transferred money from one account to another. It shows up in Bank Accounts, and Bank Account Summary, but not in Summary or the Balance Sheet. Why is that?
Thank you for your time!
It is not supposed to. Bank accounts are grouped together under “Cash at Bank” on the Summary screen and Balance Sheet (as the default).
Since they are basically pieces of the bigger “Cash at Bank” group, moving money between them will change their individual balances, but the sum of all of them together reported in “Cash at Bank” on the Summary and Balance Sheet will still remain the same, so from an accounting perspective, there is no change to be reflected on the Summary tab or Balance Sheet.
It’s analogous to taking $100 out of your left pocket, and moving it to your right pocket; the amount in each pocket has changed, but you still have $100 on you.
I understand the total balance. But, underneath Cash at Bank, each account is listed individually with their balance. And on the Balance sheet, each account is listed individually. The two accounts should have the correct balance after having made the inter account transaction, shouldn’t they? They don’t.
You need to show your chart of accounts, because what you describe is not the standard setup. Apparently you have custom control accounts, and you may have defined them incorrectly.
I see. Are the transfers listed as pending? If so the individual accounts will still report the old balances until the transfer is marked cleared.
If they are cleared could you illustrate with screen shots?
I’m uploading screenshots of my Chart of Accounts, the Summary, the Inter Account Transfer, and the Balance Sheet. As you can see the transfers are cleared, not pending. The transfer does show correctly under Bank Accounts. I didn’t include a screenshot of that. I followed the instructions for setting up accounts, at least I tried. Thank you for helping.
I think I have an idea of what the issue may be…it looks like the bank accounts are setup in both the Chart of Accounts, and Bank Accounts tab?
The Inter Account Transfers will only affect the accounts setup via the Bank Accounts tab; it won’t move amounts between accounts setup in the master Chart of Accounts. The transfer activity is likely then all taking place in the “Cash at Bank” account.
Should the bank accounts only be setup via the Bank Accounts tab? Will I lose data if I delete the bank accounts from the Chart of Accounts? I really like having the Balance Sheet show the current figures for the individual bank accounts, and not just the total.
You can set them up in either area, but only one, not both. I would recommend you leave them in Bank Accounts since that will allow you to make use of the Inter Account Transfer and Bank Reconciliations tabs, and bank statement imports, which should make managing the accounts easier. The tradeoff is that they won’t appear separately on the Summary or Balance Sheet, but you will always be able to drill down on the “Cash at Bank” amount to see their individual balances.
That will depend on whether they have had any activity actually entered in them. You can check by drilling down on their amounts from the Summary; if all that appears is a starting balance like so;
then you should be able to safely delete them from the Chart of Accounts (of course, back up your file before hand).
If there are multiple rows and a Debit and Credit column, then activity has been recorded and you would lose data if you deleted them. In this case the best course of action would likely be to zero out the ones from the Chart of Accounts by using a Journal Entry to avoid overstating your assets.
I deleted the bank accounts from the Chart of Accounts. No data appears to have been lost. That’s a good thing! Then, because I really do want the bank accounts to show on the Summary and the Balance Sheet, I tried setting up Control accounts under the Asset category. The accounts show up, but with no balances! I’ve read the Guide on setting up Control Accounts, and thought I followed the directions. What am I doing wrong now? I hope you’re not getting weary of me, because you have been very helpful. Thank you!
The best way to give visibility to individual bank accounts on the balance sheet is to set up a custom control account for each bank account. Then—and this is what you apparently have not done—you need to edit the bank accounts and reassign their control accounts from the default Cash at bank to the appropriate custom control accounts. Do this for each bank account, one per custom control account.
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Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I would give you a hug, were it not for COVID! It worked! I am a happy camper. I read all the Guides, and Forums that I could find, but missed that somehow! Thank you for taking the time to help me.