You can merge two General Ledger (GL) accounts in QuickBooks, but there are a few important considerations:
- merging accounts can only be performed in single-user mode;
- the reconciliation status of each transaction in a balance sheet account is preserved in the merge;
- once you merge 2 accounts, you can’t reverse or undo it;
- you can only merge 2 accounts in a single step;
- both accounts must be on the same hierarchical level if you’d like to merge accounts based on the account name;
- both accounts being merged must be of the same type; and
- neither account involved in the merge can be mapped to a 1099 category.
To merge one account with another, start with the account that you want to remove from your GL chart of accounts and edit that account.
You can change either the name or the account number of the account being removed to match the name or the account number of the account into which the account will be merged.
If you are merging one account into another by editing the account number, you’ll see this window:
If you’re merging by editing the account name, you’ll see this window:
Remember that merging based on name only works for accounts that are on the same hierarchical level. If you change the name of a top-level account to match that of a sub-account, you won’t be asked if you want to merge the accounts because they’re not on the same hierarchical level. Instead, you’ll end up with a top-level account with a name that is identical to a sub-account.
For balance sheet accounts, the reconciliation status of each transaction in the account being removed will be transferred to the destination account, so that any unreconciled transactions in the account being removed will remain unreconciled after the merge. Therefore, before you merge accounts, consider the impact on reconciling the destination account after the merge, which will then include the transactions from both accounts. Often, performing a reconciliation is easier when there are fewer transactions to reconcile.
Merging accounts is also discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.