Issue with Business receivable/payable and sales tax accounts

eminarik

Hi,

I recently turned on the Quicken cloud function. Unfortunately (and kind of stupidly) I forgot to take a backup before I did this. After I turned on this function and synced accounts, it changed the accounts receivable, accounts payable and GST payable and PST payable accounts I had into liability accounts and were no longer linked to the create customer invoices or enter bills functions. I did see a similar issue from a few years back on here and it indicated just creating new linked accounts. I have done this and have a new accounts receivable and accounts payable. It also created a new sales tax account.

My issue is this: when I go to create a customer invoice or create a bill now there are no longer any columns or places for me to insert any sales tax information. I also cannot create another sales tax account for PST payable. I cannot find any information online about this.

Thank you for your help.
Erica

YingDave

@eminarik

Sorry have not been on the forums for a little while. To turn off using PST, you need to be in Business, Design Invoice Forms. You can select estimate and invoice forms and you change settings (cog) next to Sales tax and untick "Use Tax 2" to turn off PST. in Bills you just ignore it and don't enter that amount.

The original issue os a long running one when upgrading - happened to me too. It turns A/R & A/P into asset liability. When I upgraded you go into the accounts and switch back on "Tax tracking setting" which fixes them back to Liability back to invoice (A/R) accounts.

Now in the latest update that "Tax  tracking Setting" has been hidden - I can only assume in an attempt to stop users inadvertently breaking the invoicing accounts (A/R A/P) - BUT it no longer allows you to fix and account that was broken in the upgrade. That really is not thinking things through... the root cause of the A/r A/p being broken is something in the files upgrade process, probably not from a user accently switching off tax tracking settings. So the fix in R28.15 has made things worse in fact!
 

 

UKR

Depending on your settings in Edit / Preferences / Backup, there may be a relatively recent Automatic Backup file that you can restore from ... have you looked at those backup files?

As to the issue with the new accounts and being a Canadian user, I recommend you contact  Quicken Support (please note the posted hours of operation) and let them know about this unwanted change.

Note: Your browser must allow popups from https://www.quicken.com for chat to function

How to properly set up Quicken Backup
How to make Quicken create a backup for you automatically every time you close Quicken
What Quicken backups are available where?

For the sake of this discussion it is assumed that your Quicken data file is located in the Default (and recommended) place: C:\Users\username\Documents\Quicken

Review the backup settings available in Quicken (under Edit / Preferences / Backup).

In there you will find two types of backup: Automatic and Manual Backup.

Automatic Backup should be enabled and always goes to a \Backup folder that's part of the folder which contains your current Quicken data file, e.g. \Documents\Quicken\Backup. Set it to create a backup after running Quicken [1] times and to keep [9] (or more, your choice) backup copies.
The file name for Automatic Backup files contains a date and time stamp as part of the file name, e.g. QDATA-2020-03-22.PM03.45.QDF-backup

To create a Manual Backup copy of your Quicken data file on an external device (USB-hard drive or USB memory stick recommended), put a checkmark at "Manual Backup Reminder" to enable the function and set "Remind me after running Quicken [xx] times" to [1].

Click OK to save the changes.

From now on, when you close Quicken using the red X button, you will get a popup window.

When you get this window for the first time, on some versions click the radio button for "Backup on my computer".
Change the Backup File name's drive letter and path to point to your external device so that it looks something like this: E:\Quicken Backup\QDATA-2019-04-01.QDF-backup
or use the Change button and work your way through the dialog.

Do not change the filename portion! Just overtype the drive letter and choose a backup folder name. If the folder does not exist, it will be created.

Also choose the option to "Add date to backup file name".

Every day when you run Backup or close Quicken, an additional backup file is created. Without the Add Date option you only have 1 backup copy which is overwritten every day ... and that may prove bad in a problem recovery situation.

Allow this backup to run to save the changes made on the screen.

Of course, once in a while you will have to go in and delete some of the oldest backup files, at your discretion, to avoid filling up your USB device.

One can never have enough backups of a Quicken data file. BTDTGTS!

YingDave

I use shareware program FreeFileSynch to backup and all my data files in one go to outside storage. Better off taking a copy of your entire data drive first if you can g. Documents folder.

If automatic backups are set on, and are created, you can also see them in Quicken, File menu, Backup & Restore, then lastly 'Restore from Austomatic Backup'. Do you see 5 or so files there, each stamped with Date and Time? Try opening one of these only after you have copied the entire documents folder first.

Unfortunately the bugs you mentioned is known in CA H&B and was not fixed in the recent update.

eminarik

Thanks. I did check the backups before posting. Because I rarely close my Quicken it was not backing up regularly...I will have to start doing manual backups on my own.

YingDave, the bugs you talk about, is it just the accounts becoming liability accounts? Or do you also mean the sales tax function not working properly too? If that is the case and I can't get the sales tax function to work properly I may have to stop using Quicken....

eminarik

So I think I found my issue but I'm not sure how to fix it. It appears that the ability to turn on tax tracking is not in the Account Details for the Customer Invoice account type (my accounts receivable).

I've tried to attach a screen shot to show you what I mean.

I'm not sure why the tax tracking yes or no options are not there.

Quicken Sarah

Hello @eminarik

Thank you for taking the time to share the details of this issue with the community, although I apologize for any frustration or inconvenience experienced.

I've been working with my personal file and apologize, but I have a few additional questions for you.

When the new invoice and sales tax accounts were created, were they automatically created from the business tab?  

Or did you perhaps go through the Add Account > Accounts Receivable/Payable link?

If you went through the Add Account flow, do you happen to remember if you received the prompt to enable sales tax tracking for the account?



If not, please create a back-up of your data file and once created, go to the Tools menu > Add Account > Account Receivables and create another new invoice account.  Do you now receive the prompt to enable the sales tax tracking?

Please let us know, thank you.

Sarah

UKR

@Quicken Sarah ,

in the image you provided above, there's this bullet item:

• You can enable tax tracking later

Other than the procedure you described, adding yet another A/R account, is there a dialog to follow in order to change an existing account's tax tracking attribute? I mean, if the programmers put a bullet item here, there's got to be a process to do so  ...

Quicken Sarah

Hi @UKR

I suspect there's a bug here, because there should absolutely be an option in the Account Details windows to enable sales tax tracking at a later date.

However, as a workaround to get the User up and running now, I was testing if their experience was the same as mine, in which the only option to enable sales tax tracking is appearing during the specific Add Account flow

Hope this helps,

Sarah

eminarik

Hi @QuickenSarah

The accounts were created when I went to go create a customer invoice. Because the old accounts that were set up were no longer linked as they had become liability accounts, when I went to create a customer invoice it asked me to create a new customer invoice account and just wanted me to name it. That was all it asked me. When I did that, it created my new accounts receivable and then the program automatically created the sales tax account. But as you can see from the picture I attached, the customer invoices (accts receivable) account does not have the options I need to turn on tax tracking for some reason.

I have gone and done as you suggested using the add account menu under Tools for both receivables and payables and this seems to be the fix I needed. I agree that there must be a system bug for when you set up the accounts by clicking create invoice or create bill because that is how I had done it initially.

I have now been able to set up separate GST and PST payable accounts to track the taxes separately again as well.

And I've learned my lesson about backing up....

I do have one last question. I have both PST and GST set up on the create invoices which is what I want. But on the create bills window it is showing both taxes but I previously just had GST as I don't claim any PST ITCs. And can't for the life of me remember how I had set that up last time.

eminarik

@Quicken Sarah see above. My @ didn't work in my comment apparently.

YingDave

@eminarik

Sorry have not been on the forums for a little while. To turn off using PST, you need to be in Business, Design Invoice Forms. You can select estimate and invoice forms and you change settings (cog) next to Sales tax and untick "Use Tax 2" to turn off PST. in Bills you just ignore it and don't enter that amount.

The original issue os a long running one when upgrading - happened to me too. It turns A/R & A/P into asset liability. When I upgraded you go into the accounts and switch back on "Tax tracking setting" which fixes them back to Liability back to invoice (A/R) accounts.

Now in the latest update that "Tax  tracking Setting" has been hidden - I can only assume in an attempt to stop users inadvertently breaking the invoicing accounts (A/R A/P) - BUT it no longer allows you to fix and account that was broken in the upgrade. That really is not thinking things through... the root cause of the A/r A/p being broken is something in the files upgrade process, probably not from a user accently switching off tax tracking settings. So the fix in R28.15 has made things worse in fact!