Correct Mistakes Easily

by Sharon
(OKC)

I wish that it was easier to go back and correct mistakes.

Jennifer replies:

Not to make light of your frustration, but QB is *extremely* forgiving about mistakes.

Imagine an accounting program that did not allow you to delete your mistakes, but instead you had to make reversing entries to negate the effect of your mistake? You then have to re-enter your corrected transaction. So there would be three entries:

1. Your original, mistaken, transaction
2. Your reversal, to negate the effect of your mistaken transaction
3. Your new, hopefully correct, transaction

What if the new transaction is wrong too? Too bad - you have to reverse it, then try again! So now we have five transactions in the file, instead of one.

I haven't used a program like that lately, but my uncle does for his church accounting software, and he says it's very frustrating! And back in the old days of DOS based software, most accounting programs were like that.

So QB is pretty good that way. It allows you to delete or alter most transactions. Some accountants might argue that QB allows for TOO much in that respect. Prior years can (and do!) get altered too easily, making it hard to keep the books in line with the tax returns.

Is there a specific issue you are having trouble correcting?