When making journal entries, the NAME does not appear on the reports. Is there a explination for this?

Journal Entry are brute force accounting entries.

If you want Names on Banking transactions, you use Banking Transactions. You don't use JE. If you want Names for sales transactions, you don't use JE. You use Sales Transactions.

It's best to avoid JE when you want Name-related functions, and use the Name-related Activities that are provided for.

Also, JE bypass cash vs accrual basis reporting, and don't show for Sales reporting and are not used for Sales Tax activities. They are not Spending, Purchase, or Sales, really. They are Accounting Entries, and hardly used in any of the QB programs or products.

I've used Quickbooks since the first day it first launched, and have used it through all iterations since then, as a business owner (large and small) and as a CPA. I wish I knew how to relay to Intuit that the failure to have the name-field from journal entries print on the G/L is simply a flaw in the program. And a serious one. I read the whole stream below of "why it doesn't" and how to work around it. Those who think JEs are "brute force" tools and should not be used just don't know old-school accounting. But regardless, there is simply no good reason that the G/L will not print names from journal entries. And the lack makes normal accounting by a knowledgeable CPA virtually impossible in scenarios (and there are plenty) when journal entries are needed. If anyone knows how to deliver messages to Intuit, please ask them to fix this.

Thanks! 

This is one more reason why, as a Bookkeeper I BEG my clients not to make me use QBO.  The journal entries NEED to show a name, there are many transactions that an accountant or bookkeeper that can't be entered as a bank, invoice, or bill transaction.

Yes, I fixed the problem by putting the name of the vendor or customer in the NUM for the JE but that is not a professional solution.

So I have noticed, in the transaction report detail it lists the name if it has only one donor in the deposit.  If there are more than 1 donor in the deposit the field is left blank.  This is definitely a programming error, otherwise it would never show up.  This really needs to be fixed, I want to go back to the desktop version.

Hello there, @KatyBelle.

I understand the relevance of having the option to assign transaction numbers when using QuickBooks Online (QBO). However, this isn't available in QBO. Meanwhile, it's best to put forward your suggestions and feedback regarding this option to our product developers. Here's how to send feedback:

1. Click the Gear icon in the upper-right corner.
2. Select Feedback under Profile.
3. Share your feedback.
4.  Click Next to submit.

Our product engineers would consider your suggestions and you can always check the status of your request through this link: QuickBooks Online Customer Feedback.

Furthermore, I've added an article to help you organize your bank feeds transactions: Categorize and match online bank transactions in QBO.

I appreciate your willingness to help us improve our products, @KatyBelle. For any additional concerns regarding your transactions in QBO, I'm just a reply away.

QuickBooks, how has it been more than 4 years and you still haven't solved this problem? I have discussed moving my clients to other platforms and this is honestly making me want to do so. As so many people have pointed out in this thread, this setup is simply unacceptable. Everybody is tired of your excuses. I genuinely don't know how you already had QuickBooks desktop and still got so many things so wrong in building QuickBooks Online. Either way, it is clear whoever programmed this screwed up and you cannot convince me otherwise. Why do you have the ability to add names in a journal entry, but then they don't show up? How does that even make any sense? There are lots of functions this impacts, including deposits, journal entries, and split transactions. The vendor name/customer name should ALWAYS BE ENTERED AT THE LINE LEVEL and should show up in the various reports. Fix it! Stop making excuses. This was brought to your attention in 2018. It's 2023!

After spending over an hour monkeying around in quick books trying to get a report that pulls in transactions including JE's with names, I came across this thread.  It is absolutely ridiculous that this functionality does not exist and extremely annoying that it hasn't been corrected after 5 years of suggestions.  Even more annoying is for someone to suggest exporting to excel and creating a spreadsheet.   That is like telling someone who bought a new car that they might be expected to push it for the last mile of their commute each day....not acceptable.....and reccommending customers (for 5 years!!)  to send in a suggestion to the Intuit team to add this feature seems beyond the pale.

This seems like a joke. 

I know accounting. i studied it but never did it. Bookkeeping is not accounting. now I'm in software so I see that angle too and know it could be done. 

They don't want to do it. 

I'm willing to pay money for value, but they still wanna have their methods. I am going to look into other accounting systems. 

I don't know what you all are dealing with, your use cases and your usage of the features of quickbooks. I'm sure they're mostly good. My use case is simple. I have rental properties and a parent holding company, so they're de facto consolidated reports. 

Heaven forbid I want to make a journal entry, like when I didn't pay interest from my business bank accounts for a few times as I was setting them up and getting organized. I wanted to and did manually book my HELOC interest for each month. Sancta simplicita- journal entries make things SIMPLER and EASIER. 

But QBO thinks otherwise.. for whatever reason. 

I read that they market as accounting but really are more business service software. Well it's like any opinionated framework with their way and their system and their terminologies combined with their business motives, their SaaS. I'm starting to hate SaaS- software as a service. It's good in theory and the cloud is better but.. it's also a way to milk people and I believe that's what they're doing here. 

Even not having a filter option in reports to filter on content of the memo/description is dumb, and deliberate. That would be so easy to implement. It reminds me of a simple SQL query. it's nothing new. 

They don't care. If they implemented these features, I'd be happy to be proven wrong. I'm capitalist. I love business but I hate this monopolistic or heavy handed. It's not like it's the insurance industry but they're all the same- bots for customer service or have users teach each other in forums, upsel everything, etc. 

The admins here are right about one thing- for pure search functionality excel beats everything. That's what I am going to do for my work on taxes, but I will probably switch. Sometimes the only solution is to walk away. Everyone else has said everything that could be said. In my humble opinion if they treat journal entries as brute force, they don't deserve to call themselves an accounting software, but generic business software or whatever. I also don't know if a higher percentage of us are neurodivergent. i am, and i like the details and i like accuracy- not in all things but in business and finance for sure. Yeah screw quickbooks. They pretend to care but don't, and there's a word for that too. it's called gaslighting. It's not that big of a deal for me.. but still I like people who care and who don't string you along with promises. Just do it. But they won't, so just leave or accept. that's our choice. Find work arounds if you need to. They're money grubbers it seems like. I don't know 100 percent for sure but that's what it seems like, but there are also alternatives.