Why do accountants keep messing up my bookkeeping software?
External accountants make unauthorized journal entries and adjustments directly in software like QuickBooks and Quicken without understanding day-to-day operations. This bypasses standard protocols, alters account totals, and leaves customer or vendor balances open, which stops internal bookkeepers from tracking granular details and answering client questions accurately.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Giving tax preparer read-only access
- 2Password protecting the previous year
- 3Requesting a list of journal entries to enter manually rather than letting accountants edit books directly
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I will say that I detest when someone else changes my entries in QBO. As the bookkeeper I need to know transactions on a very detailed and granular level and when account totals change or entries are edited my ability to answer my clients' questions about their finances is compomised.”source ↗
“I don't need them making entries that make my life harder and screw things up - I’m looking at you folks who think it’s ok to do a JE to A/P or A/R - that’s a big nope for me.”source ↗
“I’ve had accountants enter AJEs into QB directly, instead of using QB’s protocols. They just write off the AP/AR directly, but it leaves the balance open on the customer’s/vendor’s account because the invoice/bill is still open.”source ↗
“Right now I’m having a hard time with a CPA that isn’t comprehending how a credit card account works in Quicken. She wants all the details of the card entered into the payment made.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 21How to clean up months of messy client expense records
- 9How to handle expense reports without being good at math
- 4How do you do account reconciliation when departments are split up?
- 4How to fix journal entries moving income to expense accounts
- 2Why does team documentation always go out of date?
- 2How to stop manually moving numbers from PDFs into Excel