Journal Entry using sales tax says credits and debits not balanced but total at bottom is

Hi Mordane,

Welcome and thanks for joining us. Journal entries are an important part of managing your books to ensure your transactions are part of the accounting records of your business. With QuickBooks Online, your entry process is designed to be smooth and precise. I'll be happy to assist you with this.

A good starting point would be to ensure there are no temporary files in the app or browser causing bugs in the software. To make sure the program is working optimally, I recommend following the troubleshooting steps in this article: Clear cache and cookies to fix issues when using QuickBooks Online

If the issue persists, this could be due to the rounding up of your taxes on your sales tax transactions. QuickBooks has a very specific way to integrate journal entries with the tax center to ensure accuracy of reports. To do so, you can manually record tax amounts using your tax liability account (typically GST/HST Payable) and map them to the correct line of your tax return in the Sales Tax column. You'll also need to ensure taxes aren't being automatically calculated on other lines. The best practice in this case is to select Exempt (Sales) for income and Exempt (Purchases) for expenses to have an accurate line 101 when filing. 

Because journal entries are recommended if you have a good grasp of accounting or you’re following the advice of your accountant, I encourage you to speak with your accountant if you're unsure of how to record this or if you need assistance to confirm the proper mapping. In case you don't have an accountant, you can find one on our Find-a-ProAdvisor website

I hope this helps. Let me know how it goes.