How come the account balances of the previous fiscal year are included in the reports of the new fiscal year?

Hi simcoescc327-gma,

It's important to know why the balances from last year are being included in the new fiscal year. I'd be happy to help point you in the right direction so you can continue using QuickBooks with peace of mind. 

Based on what you've described, I'd recommend checking to see if the report dates are matching the dates in question as that could cause balances from last year to appear on your new fiscal year report. I'd also recommend checking which accounting method you're using since there's Accrual and Cash basis. Here's how they work:

Accrual basis

• In this accounting method, the time when you enter a transaction and the time when you actually pay or receive cash may be two separate events.
• An accrual-basis report shows income regardless of whether your customers have paid your invoices and expenses regardless of whether you have paid all your bills.

Cash basis

• A bookkeeping method in which you regard income or expenses as occurring at the time you actually receive a payment or pay a bill.
• A cash-basis report only shows income if you have received cash and expenses if you have paid cash.

Knowing this info, you can now select which accounting method works best with your business. You can edit this by clicking the Gear icon > Account and Settings > Advanced > Accounting method to Cash/Accrual > Save).

Give this a try and let me know if it makes a difference on your end. I'll be one message away. 

Hello @simcoescc327-gma ,

The only reports that will show the previous fiscal year balance are Balance Sheet reports because balances in Balance Sheet accounts are always positional; meaning if you run a balance sheet, it shows you the accumulated balance of all transactions since the beginning, up to a certain date that you specify in the report.  You will notice that on all Balance Sheet reports, the date is always stated "As of June 4, 2021", no matter what you type in the date range.

P & L accounts, on the other hand, are reported on with a beginning and an end date so that you see the balances only within a certain period or date range that you enter into the report; there will be no previous fiscal year balances on this type of report.

If you want to see only the transactions of Balance Sheet accounts that are not the accumulated balance of the entire account you will have to do a custom transaction detail report.  You can start with a Transaction List by Supplier or Customer report, and customize it from there by grouping by any criteria in the list and filtering by any criteria in the list to see only the types of transactions that you want to see in the report.

Hope that helps. :)