I'm making 2 line entries under "Expense". 1st line is the Utility expense w/ no tax & 2nd line is GST paid & it comes back as error when I save the entry. Why?

Hello again mike234,

Welcome back and thanks for more details on what you're trying to do. I can go over adding sales tax on your expenses so you can move forward with recording your expenses in QuickBooks Online.

Adding sales tax to your transactions is as easy as turning on the sales tax module and then filling in the appropriate fields on your transaction. In your case, you'd want to put the utility expense line item, then on that same line, choose the appropriate sales tax code from the drop-down menu. Here's what it might look like.

As you can see, the transaction automatically knows to calculate the sales tax based on what was entered in the Amount field. You can also change the Amount is drop-down to show Inclusive of sales tax, in which case you'd be entering the entire total in the amount field. In my case, I'd enter 565. The other option is Out of scope of tax, which will mean there's no sales tax on the transaction at all.

As I mentioned in my previous response to you, QuickBooks Online wants you to use the sales tax module rather than directly entering tax liability accounts to your transactions. The field to add sales tax to your transactions is how it handles it in for sales tax paid on expenses.

It sounds like you've set up sales tax since you're seeing accounts to choose, but if you haven't, it can be done by clicking the Taxes tab, then click Set up sales tax and follow the steps. To set up new tax codes after initial setup, you can follow this article: How to set up a new sales tax code

If I'm still not quite hitting the mark with what you're looking for, I recommend getting in touch with the QuickBooks Online support team so you can discuss your situation in more detail. Here are the options for contacting support.

Phone and Chat: Click Contact Us to learn how to reach phone and chat support.

Schedule a Callback: click (?)Help in the upper right > click Contact Us > explain your situation > click Let's Talk > choose Get a callback (Note: Callback hours are the same as regular phone hours.)

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Take care!