Understanding your new & improved chart of accounts
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Understanding your new & improved chart of accounts
When you navigate to your Chart of Accounts page, you’ll notice that it has received a serious facelift. We’ve upgraded and reorganized to make navigation more friendly and easier to understand.
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When does this update appear to all users? To me it still looks like it has always done and I cannot archive accounts. Thanks!
Does archiving an empty account, in effect, delete the account? I ask because I do not see the grey "Archived" tag or the archived empty account in the Chart of Accounts any longer.
@Skafte you'll receive an email from us shortly before your account is migrated. We're rolling this out as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!
@jedanielee yes, that should be correct. Please let us know if you have any other questions!
after archiving an empty account (btw it doesnt make sense why an empty account cant be deleted) its still showing up as an option in the bank connections
@sunny30 typically when you archive an account without transactions, it should effectively remove the account from your Chart of Accounts. If this is not happening, then it could be that the account is currently still associated with a transaction, just one that may be tricky to locate. Are you able to generate an account transactions report for this account to locate any associated transactions that may not have been initially located?
@JordanFromWave the archived account isnt showing up in Chart of Accounts. But I said its still showing up as a "payment account" option under "bank connections" > to import transactions to. i mistakenly created duplicate Accounts with same name. Now even after archiving its still showing up in the bank connections which is a pain with basic functionality coz its same name i cant tell which one is valid and which one isnt.
I have just archived an operating expense, but rather there being an 'archived' tag next to it, it seems to have disappeared. I can't see how to un-archive it.
I'm having the same issue as @ThomasDaly, archived accounts seem to have completely disappeared. They were unused accounts, so maybe that's the explanation? On a related note, it would be incredibly helpful to be able to print the Chart of Accounts for reference, with filters to show active, inactive, or all accounts.
@sunny30 To get past the double account concern, I would suggest that you rename the valid account to something you'll recognize (e.g. Business Checking - Active). This will help you differentiate on the Bank Connections screen.
@ThomasDaly @HandymanHeadlee Yes, when you archive an account that has no transactions associated with it, it will be removed from the Chart of Accounts.
If the account has associated transactions, the account is still displayed inside the Chart of Accounts with the "Archived" badge next to it.
I'm a new user, trying to set up Wave. I saw some older tutorials on YouTube that suggested removing accounts that dodn't apply to my company. Is that still valid advice? I see comments that the only way to delete an unused account is to archive it. I assume that's a design flaw. How does that affect the decision whether to delete an account?
@Old_Professor That suggestion is still valid. We only provide an archive option today, but if the account does not have any transactions associated with it, we will hide it from the page to remove clutter.
Hopefully this helps clear things up,
How can I print out a list of all my active accounts (without all the 'you have not added .... ' notes), so just a list of all the accounts, under their 6 main headings, ideally all on 1 sheet. I want a look-up overview of all acccounts as a reference sheet. I could just create a Word doc listing them, but surely I should be able to print out directly from Wave (a kind of Report of Active Accounts)?
@Madison from my understanding, this choice is based on maintaining all records of transactions/events in your books; even if they were in error, or are unwanted, it's still the safest bet to have that data available to you, should you ever need it in the future.
@francois12uk I'm not sure if this 100% addresses what you're looking for, but the Reports > Account Transactions (General Ledger) will allow you to view both a summary and detailed view of this report (which will contain All Accounts as the default), which you can also export and print a copy of for your records! Depending on how many accounts you have, this may or may not fit on a single sheet.
@Ryan_W as a follow up to your answer to @francois12uk, I'm not seeing a summary view of the Account Transactions Report. That report lists all transactions, not account numbers (at least not that I can see). I'd also find it very helpful to be able to print/export a list of account numbers (not transactions) for reference.
Hey @HandymanHeadlee ahh good catch, that's my mistake; I got the summary/detail views in the P&L report mixed with the Account Transactions report. Would a decent alternative be the Account Balances, Balance Sheet, or Trial Balance reports? They'll show all of your accounts, broken down by account type, but in a summary view which shows the net movement of the balances in each account. As for a report broken out by account numbers, I'm afraid there isn't an option for that in Wave.
Thanks, @Ryan_W. I've looked through all the reports and the Trial Balance report comes closest to a basic Chart of Accounts list, but since there's no custom range for the report (only a custom single date) it doesn't always capture every single account so the list isn't complete. Even if an account hasn't been used in the past year or more, it's still helpful to have a complete list so you don't accidentally create a duplicate account for an item that's rarely used. For now I've done what @francois12uk mentioned and manually created a list, but it would be much simpler if Wave could do this natively so you don't have to update both Wave and your manual Chart of Accounts listing every time you add or archive an account. Seems like this would be a fairly simple add on when other updates are rolled out? Thanks again for your assistance.
Thank you @HandymanHeadlee for understanding what I was after. Yes a Chart of (active) Accounts listing (not transactions) is precisely what I was after. Other software packages have it, so maybe we can put it on our wishlist for Wave? Thank you.
@HandymanHeadlee @francois12uk Thanks for your suggestions and feedback here in terms of being able to print the 'active' accounts from the Chart of Accounts section in Wave or even then, being able to sort your accounts by active accounts as well. I appreciate how this would benefit your workflow as well, and hopefully in the near future we can have this improvement/feature added to the Chart of Accounts section (although, we do not have any immediate timeline right now).
I agree with @Madison , if an account has never been used it should be possible to delete it completely. Otherwise there is hidden clutter hanging around.
Adding Account Numbers doesn't seem to sort them in that order, which defeats the purpose of account numbers! Roll up or parent accounts are also a missing feature badly needed for additional detail. Are these items on the road map?
Hey @ThomasDaly, the question of being able to delete accounts from your chart of accounts is definitely something that has been mentioned before, and I can guarantee it is being seriously considered by our product team here at Wave.
Hi @BKInc, you are correct, I'm afraid accounts are not listed in chronological order in your Chart of Accounts. In regards to the roll up/parent accounts that you mentioned, can you explain in what capacity you would use these in Wave? Thanks!
@Zoe_caff1 Thank you for the reply. It's disappointing that actual account numbers can't be used as it's what we use for coding and the chart of accounts. As for roll up accounts - being able to break down a large line item like travel is really important. Lumping together all airline, hotel, rental car, travel meals, gratuities, etc makes it difficult to sort through these and perhaps do cost analysis. These are additional services that I would be willing to pay for as an alternative to QuickBooks which I currently use. Your payroll services are much more affordable but if some pretty basic accounting needs aren't possible it makes it difficult to move services.
Just a general comment...it seems many of these types of frustrations (including mine) relate to Wave trying to straddle the line between simple and full featured. I understand many who use Wave don't know anything about bookkeeping and you're looking to provide an easy-to-use tool for those folks. But those of us with some accounting background get frustrated with the lack of what are (to us) basic accounting features. I am sure these features are built into Wave in order for it to do what it does, and I understand it's best to keep those details hidden for those who need a simple tool, but perhaps you could consider offering a Basic vs. Advanced mode for those of us who are comfortable getting "under the hood" to access these features.
@HandymanHeadlee that's an absolutely fair and balanced assessment of who we build Wave for, and the type of friction this can create between the product and people with more advanced accounting knowledge. I can't really say if these type of basic vs. advanced modes can/will be built, purely because that's a larger business/target market decision than I can obviously speak to, but I do want to thank you for sharing the insight and for voicing your frustrations in an honest and thoughtful way.
I've archived an account which had no transactions in and it's disappeared. Great. But how do I unarchive it now it's disappeared?
@Stu42 If the account that you archived did not have any transactions associated with it, you won't be able to unarchive the account (there needs to be transactions associated with the account in order for it to be interchangeable). With that said, you will just need to create a new account in Wave for the one that you had archived.
Hi. I've supposedly archived an expense account and it has the grey archived sticker however it still shows up in the drop-down list and also Wave seems to automatically post transactions to it before I've got there. Obviously I can re-categorize however it is a little frustrating, especially as they are (almost) named the same except I am using different code numbers. (I use the Account ID box but also lead my description with same code for numerical order)
Also, I've just generated a cashflow report and it is showing data for an account "Sales" that I do not use, also archived, however again Wave seems to automatically post cash deposit entries into my bank account to this archived account and I have to change the categore manually. When I enter into the account from the report, it it shows no transactions available however the amount still shows on the report and adds it into my total sales!!! (Let me know if this part should be posted on a different thread.. unsure if it is a glitch wth the chart of accounts archiving (as above) or the reporting facility, which is possible as the same report also shows incorrect amounts for my attached bank.. or very possibly both
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Hey @Headroom - when you see this account in the drop down list, does it currently have a balance? If so, it sounds like there are still transactions associated with it, and you should be able to filter for this and recategorize to the correct account (if you want). This should also correct Wave's auto-categorization machine learning to re-associate with the correct area. I apologize about the frustration though, as it may take a few times recategorizing before Wave learns not to put items in this old expense account. If this has been going on for awhile though, can you let me know?
Also, I should note, if this account is showing a 0 balance with all transactions categorized out, but still appears in the drop down, this is something we're working on removing!
This other issue luckily doesn't sound like it is an auto-categorization issue as that is only capable of categorizing expenses. That is strange though. Could you send me a DM with your email that you use to login to Wave? I want to check first if that report is in a bad state, but if it isn't, I could collaborate on the account to take a closer look - if this is something you'd be comfortable with?