Ask My Accountant account in QuickBooks Online

Where does Ask My Accountant come from?

The Ask My Accountant account in QuickBooks Online is a parking space: a transaction goes there when the person entering it does not know what it was, so the bank feed can be cleared and the account reconciled while the question waits for an answer. It is a working habit of bookkeepers, not a QuickBooks feature.

It is also not a QuickBooks Online default. Intuit’s list of the default and special accounts QuickBooks Online creates names Uncategorized Income, Uncategorized Expense and Uncategorized Asset, Opening Balance Equity, Payments to deposit and others, and does not mention Ask My Accountant (Manage default and special accounts, updated August 3, 2026). So where a file has one, someone created it, or it came in with a chart of accounts brought over from another file. That matters for two reasons: it can be set up as whatever account type its creator chose, and QuickBooks will not treat it as special in any way.

It is also not the same thing as the My Accountant page. That page is where an accountant connected to the company sends requests for documents or information and the owner replies with comments and files; it holds no transactions (Use the My Accountant page, updated August 5, 2026).

What type of account is Ask My Accountant?

Usually an Other Expense account, which puts it on the Profit and Loss below operating expenses, at the bottom of the chart of accounts. Because it is user-created, check yours: open All apps, Accounting, Chart of accounts and read its type. Each choice behaves differently:

Set up as	Where it shows	What that means
Other Expense	Profit and Loss, below operating expenses	Visible on every Profit and Loss, so it gets noticed; money in posts as a negative expense
Expense	Profit and Loss, among operating expenses	Easy to miss among real expenses, and it can flow into the wrong tax line
A balance sheet type, such as Other Current Asset	Balance sheet only	Keeps profit clean while items wait, but hides them from anyone reading only the Profit and Loss

Other Expense is the common choice for a reason: an owner who reads only the Profit and Loss still sees the balance every month. Whatever the type, it has to be zero before the month is closed.

Why is my Ask My Accountant balance negative?

Because deposits were parked there too. In an expense account, money out is a debit and money in is a credit, so a $1,000 unknown payment and a $1,400 unknown deposit net to a credit of $400, shown as a negative expense. The net balance then hides both: the Profit and Loss is wrong by $1,000 of expense and $1,400 of income, not by $400. Read the transactions, never the balance.

Unknown deposits are better parked in Uncategorized Income, which QuickBooks provides for exactly that; Uncategorized Income covers what usually hides in it.

Why should Ask My Accountant be empty at month end?

Every item in it is a transaction on the wrong line of the Profit and Loss. During the month that is acceptable: it is a list of open questions. At month end the questions should have answers, which is why it sits next to the other holding accounts in the month-end close checklist.

At year end a balance is a real problem. The Profit and Loss the tax return is prepared from is wrong by at least the amount in the account, and possibly by more if money in and money out have netted against each other. There is no tax line for “ask my accountant,” so the CPA has to send every item back as a question before the return can be finished, in the busiest weeks of the year.

How do I clear Ask My Accountant?

1. List what is in it

Go to All apps, Accounting, Chart of accounts, find Ask My Accountant, and select Run report. Expense accounts have no register, so Intuit points to the report instead (Chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online). Set the dates to all dates, export it, and keep the date, amount, payee, bank description and memo for each line.

2. Ask the owner, once, with everything

Send the whole list in one go, sorted by payee, not a question a day. For each line ask what it was and, for business purchases, which job or client it was for. If the accountant works in QuickBooks Online Accountant, a request on the My Accountant page keeps the answers and the receipts in the file instead of in an email thread.

3. Move each answered item

The answer	Where it goes
A business expense	The matching expense account, with the receipt attached
Personal spending from the business account	Owner’s draw for a sole proprietor or LLC owner; for a corporation, a shareholder loan or distribution, as the CPA decides
A transfer between the business’s own accounts	A transfer, matched to the other account
A loan payment	The loan liability for principal, interest expense for interest
A purchase of equipment or a vehicle	A fixed asset account, not an expense
A payment to a contractor	The contractor expense account, with the vendor set up for 1099s
Nobody knows	Still an open question; see below

Change the category on each transaction. For a long list, QuickBooks Online Advanced and QuickBooks Online Accountant can move many at once with Settings, Dimensions, Dimension assignment, Reclassify transactions, though Intuit says it cannot change the bank or card account on an expense (Reclassify or move multiple transactions, updated August 5, 2026).

Changing only the category leaves the amount and the bank account alone, so it does not disturb a completed reconciliation. Do not delete an Ask My Accountant item to make it go away: it is a real bank transaction, and deleting it breaks the reconciliation it belongs to.

4. Decide what to do with the ones nobody can answer

Some items never get an answer: a small card charge from two years ago, a cash withdrawal with no receipt. Leaving them in Ask My Accountant forever is not a decision. The owner and the accountant should choose a treatment together, such as owner’s draw for unexplained personal-looking spending, and record the reason in the memo. Where the choice changes the tax return, it is the CPA’s call.

5. Stop it refilling

• Look at the bank rules. Under All apps, Accounting, Rules, no rule should send anything to Ask My Accountant; a rule there means the same unknown charge is being parked every month.
• Put the question in the memo. An item parked with “which job?” or “personal?” in the memo is answered in seconds; one parked blank costs a search later.
• Clear it every month. A list of 10 questions in November is a short email. A list of 120 in March holds up the return.

Ask My Accountant vs Uncategorized Expense

	Ask My Accountant	Uncategorized Expense
Created by	A user, or brought in with the file	QuickBooks Online, as a default account
Account type	Whatever its creator chose, usually Other Expense	Set by QuickBooks
Can be made inactive	Yes, it is an ordinary account	No; Intuit says it can be edited but not made inactive or merged
How items get there	Someone chose it on purpose	The bank feed or a rule posted a payment without a category
What it means	A question someone meant to ask	A transaction nobody looked at

Both should be empty at month end, and a cleanup clears both the same way. The difference is what the balance says about the file: Ask My Accountant at least shows that someone noticed the item.

When the account has been filling for a year

A handful of items at month end is a normal list of questions. A year of them, or a balance going into a tax year that has already been filed, means the Profit and Loss has been wrong all year, possibly in both directions, and every item has to be traced back to its bank line and answered before the books can be closed. That is cleanup work, and once it is done, monthly bookkeeping keeps the account at zero by asking the questions while the answers are still fresh. A similar holding balance on the equity side is covered in Opening Balance Equity.

$99per month of backlog20% off 6+ months

If Ask My Accountant has items from months that are already reconciled or a year already filed, send the file for a free review before moving them.

To price clearing a year of Ask My Accountant entries before you ask, the cost calculator totals it by the month. Every offer is on the pricing page.