So I was given "working papers" by the company's CPA quite awhile ago and I should have asked for help then. He must think I know what to do, he just said, "Please post my adjustments". I don't want to appear stupid but there is a line for Trial Balance Debit, Trial Balance Credit, Adjusted Debit, Adjusted Credit, and Adjusted Trial Balance Debit and Credit. The #'s don't seem to balance out if I do them a straight journal entry. I don't want to screw up the books but I'm at a loss as to how to make these adjustments in QuickBooks Pro 2010. He has a TON of adjusments, some of which I believe are personal expenses that the owner incured for travel, etc. that was paid personally by the owner, but the CPA wants those expenses included in the company books since they were unreimbursed expenses? Any direction as to how this is normally done would be much appreciated.

What do you mean by the numbers don't balance out if you do them as straight journal entries? Do you mean that the debits & credits don't end up balancing? (Cause even if you can do that in Quickbooks, it would certainly give you a warning that it's not balanced. It's hard to get out of balance with software.) Or do you mean that the adjusted balances are not coming out like he wrote on the paper?

Adjustments generally are going to be done as "straight journal entries." (i.e. using the general journal module of the software.) There isn't any reason for that not to work, unless you're involving things with subsidiaries, like payables and receivables. (And I don't know Quickbooks itself, so I couldn't tell you exactly how that might work.) But I mean if you're just entering depreciation stuff, interest, insurance, etc. blah, blah, there's no reason on earth for it not to come out.

You are entering what's in the "adjustments" columns, right? That's your adjusting entries.

Unless he just plain made a mistake. Do you still have a print-out of a trial balance (or financial statements) that are prior to you trying to enter those adjustments? If so, check them against his "unadjusted" columns. If those don't match, then something's gotten messed up. Either what you have isn't really the final numbers prior to the adjustments, or he made some kind of adjustments that he never gave to you, something. If you find something not right about the UNadjusted numbers, then contact him and find out why they don't match.

If those match, and you're entering off the adjustments columns, and you're doing it right, and that is not coming out, then either you're entering something incorrectly, or he calculated something wrong. I guess one good question is whether he hand-wrote this or he spit it out of some software. If he hand-wrote it, he could easily have just calculated the final balance incorrectly. So you can check that yourself. i.e. take the unadjusted, adjust for whatever is in the adjustments columns, and see if it matches what he has in the adjusted T/B. If not, he just messed up some math. If he spit that out of some software, which I could easily believe cause he's probably entering it in his software as well - to have record and do taxes, etc. - then it's possible he entered something he never gave you.

It happens. Any time I work with someone else, I check all the numbers and make sure what I have and what the other person has are syncing.

Have you already posted your adjustments, or does it post automatically as you go? (Again, I don't know Quickbooks itself. But accounting programs are all much alike.) Can you delete entries that have been posted?

If none of the above works, please give me some more detail and I'll see what I can think up. Or if you need clarification, just ask. I may not be able to get back immediately (I've got stuff of my own I really need to be working on), but you've already delayed this a bit - I doubt a few more days will matter. :)

Oh, and if you find you've messed something up and aren't sure how to get it fixed, then I wouldn't touch anything until you can ask.

Oh, as to the owner expenses... obviously I don't know what actually happened there, but if he's taking them and putting them into expense accounts, I'd think they'd also have to be going into some type of payable to the owner. (Or in exchange for something.) If the company never pays them, or make some kind of exchange, they really can't count them as expenses.

Unless you actually know enough about accounting to know what you're doing, I wouldn't mess with what he's done. If you just want to know for the sake of knowing (that's how you learn), you can tell me what the full entries are and I might figure it out. You can ask him stuff too. I was always asking our CPA's questions so that I could learn stuff - it's not like you come out of school from a textbook and really understand it. (Of course, time is money, in this case, literally.)

I've seen accountants screw up, but unless you know there's a problem with this guy, you'll just have to trust what he's done.

(And don't forget, he's got all these same entries on his side. What he has and what you end up with must match. If you ever seriously think there's a problem, bring it up to him. If you're more comfortable asking here first, that's fine.)