How to delete a transaction in QuickBooks

Decide whether the transaction should be deleted or voided. Intuit treats both as ways to deal with duplicate or unneeded entries so balances stay accurate. Deleting takes the transaction away entirely, leaving only its audit log entry. Voiding keeps it on record at zero, but only some types can be voided: invoices, payments, bill payments and sales orders on the sales side, and cheques, expenses and bill payments on the expense side. A void can't be undone, though a voided transaction can be deleted later.

Bank transactions follow their own rule. Those sitting on the Excluded tab of the Bank transactions page can be deleted several at a time, and Intuit says excluded transactions are the only ones QuickBooks deletes in bulk. Everything else goes one transaction at a time.

If you'll want to check the deletion afterwards, make sure you can open the audit log, which needs admin access.

1. Go to All apps. For a sale, select Sales & Get Paid, then Sales transactions. For a purchase such as a cheque, an expense or a bill payment, select Expenses & Bills, then Expense transactions.
2. Find the transaction you want to delete.
3. Open the dropdown in its Action column and select Delete. Intuit notes the option can be named differently for some transaction types.
4. Select Delete to confirm.

To clear several excluded bank transactions at once, go to All apps, select Accounting, then Bank transactions. Open the Excluded tab, tick the box beside each transaction you want gone, and select Delete.

The transaction is removed from everywhere in QuickBooks except the audit log. That log records activity across the whole account, not only transactions, and for each change it shows the date, the user who made it and the original transaction details.

To trace a deletion, go to Settings and select Audit log. Narrow the results with the User, Date Changed or Events dropdowns, then find the entry you need. Where View appears in the History column, selecting it opens the audit history for that transaction. Intuit says events stay available in the log for two years.

Because the log keeps the original details, it's what Intuit suggests using to re-enter a transaction deleted in error. For audit and security reasons, QuickBooks doesn't let anyone switch the audit log off, so deleting a transaction still leaves an entry there.

If the audit log isn't showing for you, it's because the log needs admin access. Ask your primary admin to give you that access. If an entry has no View option in the History column, that's expected, because Intuit says View is there only for certain transactions.

A user name you don't recognise in the log is usually one QuickBooks creates for itself. Online Banking Administration marks automatic changes linked to your connected bank accounts. System Administration marks other automatic changes, such as a recurring transaction being added, an app connected to QuickBooks sending data, or a bank feed update. Support Representative marks changes made by a QuickBooks Online support consultant.