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There are always times in our business when we like to give our books to our accountant to make adjusting entries and review them. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to give my accountant his set of my books and stop working. It's necessary for me to continue my day-to-day operations within QuickBooks. Well, QuickBooks includes an Accountant's Copy in order to accomplish this goal. The Accountant's Copy actually allows us to set up a second set of books I can give to my accountant and then merge those two sets of books back together again when finished. What's important to remember is that when we deal with an Accountant Copy, we actually have two different copies and our accountant and our self will be working in two separate files. In order to deliminate those two files, we'll set up a dividing date. I will work with transactions after the dividing date. My accountant will work with transactions prior to that date. As I'm working, there will be restrictions on what I can do. Fortunately, I can remove these restrictions if absolutely necessary. However, in doing so, I will create a situation where the copy is completely void. That means I'm back to making manual journal entries for the changes my accountant wants to see. Some of the restrictions that we will see in place deal with the actual change of the core data within QuickBooks. For example, I can not delete an entry in a list. I can not rename an item in a list nor can I change an account in the Chart of Accounts. If you look at what I can not do, it's really surrounding changing any existing entries. I'll need to wait before I can change subaccounts either to the Chart of Accounts or to items such as a customer. The concept here is not to make any changes that will affect what my accounting is working on. My accountant will have some restrictions also. My accountant can not delete the list entries nor edit the account names nor can my accountant make anything inactive. Truthfully, my accountant is limited to just creating journal entries. These restrictions are in place to make sure that I can continue working while my accountant is making changes in the background. When my accountant is finished, I'll receive back a file and merge them together. It is very important to understand that QuickBooks does not show a list of what changes have been made. It'll be my obligation to insure I understand the changes my accountant has put into place. Let's go back into QuickBooks. Inside of QuickBooks, you will see that I can go to the word File. Under File, go down to the Accountant's Copy and in the Accountant's Copy, I'll be able to now set it up. Note that I can Open or Convert. When I click on Open and Convert, it will take me to a Summary Screen that will remind us of the items we just discussed. You'll notice that I create the file with the dividing date, send it to my accountant, my accountant works on those transactions while I'm independently working on my own transactions. When my accountant is finished, they'll return the file to me. I will now review and import those changes. Again, keep in mind the review that we're discussing is not internal to QuickBooks. After understanding the impact of the Accountant's Copy, I can now go to the next screen and set it up. If you need to review any of the components we talked about, you'll note that our following screen recaps all of the information. You'll also notice that it'll take you directly to the Help Menu for more details on what we can do. The Accountant's Copy is a wonderful way to allow your accountant to work. However, always remember when it is outstanding and make sure you merge those back together again. Don't forget; worse case scenario, you can always remove the copy and return to business as normal.