It seems that journal entire can no longer be entered using expense amounts that are inclusive of HST. When will this be fixed?

Hello farrell-farrellm,

It's great to hear that you're taking advantage of things like setting up default sales tax codes for your expense accounts in QuickBooks Online. This is useful when you're entering bills and expense transactions so that the program knows automatically which sales tax code you'd like to use. When it comes to journal entries, working with sales tax is a bit different, and I can go over that with you so that you can ensure the calculations are being entered correctly in your books.

When you work with a journal entry in QuickBooks Online, it's absolutely possible to include expense accounts that have default sales tax codes attributed to them. However, even with that default code set up, there's still an extra step to take when entering your journal.

I find it helpful to think of using journal entries like needing to pull apart all of the pieces of a transaction. So, not only will you want to enter lines for debits and credits for the accounts involved, but also for the sales tax. When entering a journal entry, the sales tax or taxes should be its/their own line(s) on the transaction, and then you can use the Sales Tax drop-down menu to map the amount to the line on your sales tax return. The transaction would end up looking something like this.

Keep in mind that this is just an example and that it's best to consult an accountant if you're not sure how to navigate the debits and credits, which accounts to choose, or which lines to pick for your sales tax filing. The important part with this example is to note that the sales tax is it's own line and mapped to correspond with lines on a sales tax return.

In this case, the default sales tax code you set up on your expense account won't apply and manually accounting for the sales tax in this way is necessary. Even if you were to pick the sales tax code again for the expenses account line, the amount wouldn't be properly mapped to the sales tax centre although the calculations would be done on the journal. The sales tax column on journal entries is for using alongside sales tax line items.

I hope this has helped clarify the situation from the QuickBooks Online perspective. Just make sure you're working with the journal entry in the way I outlined above and you should be good to go. If you'd like some assistance with working with the finer details of journal entries, an accountant is the way to go. Using the My Accountant tab, it's possible to invite your accountant to your account as a user or you can use the Find a pro to help button in that tab to research QuickBooks-certified accountants near you.

Feel free to let me know how it goes.