We’ve launched a new feature that allows you to lock accounts in the Chart of Accounts. We expect the primary use case for this feature to be parent accounts, but you can lock any account you’d like.
Anyone with Chart of Accounts access can lock an account, and the feature is available on all QuickBooks plans in all regions. When you lock an account, it will no longer be selectable on dropdowns, so you won’t be able to post to it. The restriction will apply to all users in the company (accountants, clients, admins, non-admins, etc.) Of course, you’ll still be able to select the account in dropdowns like Reports and Search where you’re not actually posting. And if you really need to post a transaction to a locked account, you can always unlock it, post, and re-lock.
Because we expect the main use case to be parent accounts, we’ve added a new parent account filter to the COA list view. You can filter to see all parent accounts, select all, and lock them all with a single click.
You’ll also start seeing prompts to lock parent accounts if you create subaccounts underneath them, to help discourage posting to the parent.
When an account is locked, we’ll stop predicting to that account in the bank feed. We’ll also stop any bank rules from running if they post to the account. But to avoid breaking third-party app connections, we’ll let third-party apps continue to post to accounts even if they are locked.
Keep an eye out for brand-new Chart of Accounts Import, Chart of Accounts Export, and Chart of Accounts Templates features coming your way in the next month or two. All three of these will support account locking as well, so you can scale locked accounts across your clients and practice.
We built this feature based on what we heard from accountants, so if you have feedback, let us know here on Canny!
