In QuickBooks, the customers are assigned a Location or a Class category. These categories have a significant role in tracking expenses and income. Sometimes, when you pull out a report such as a balance sheet, for example, you might see the QuickBooks Online Not Specified category. This justifies that the transaction you are seeking is not assigned to any customer. To change its status, you will have to open each transaction from the Amount column and assign the customer to a transaction or a bank account. Learning further about the category in QBO can help understand its function in detail. Thus, better usage can be implemented.
The simplest definition of Not specified is that it is a category in the software. You may not always see it, unlike the usual categories. The QuickBooks Online Not Specified category can display in different scenarios. For instance, in certain transactions, you will have to assign the Class category so it does appear in the category. The reason why this is so is that it is assigned to the invoice already.
Furthermore, the amounts you see in the Not Specified section are the ones that are not assigned to the filter selected from the Display columns. For example, if you selected the Location category, then the amount in Not Specified comes from the transactions that have not been assigned any location.
Similarly, you may choose a Class category. The amount you see in Not Specified has come from the transactions that are not assigned any class. You can assign a category to these amounts by running a report.
The Not Specified category can be used when you understand the parts comprising it. These can be inclusive of transactions, header, as well as the Detail columns. By learning about them, you can run a balance sheet report for using this category.
Every transaction type is divided into two sections; Header and Detail. Let’s say, you are having Checks as your transaction type. Then the Header section will display the Bank Account. The Detail section will show the Expense item. On the other hand, if you have Invoice as your transaction type, then the Header displays Accounts Receivable. The Detail columns show the Incomes associated with products or services.
QuickBooks Online uses information from Details and Header columns. However, it also depends on which report you are running. For instance, the Profit & Loss report uses the data from the Detail columns while the Balance Sheet report uses the details from the Headers column.
The amounts of Accounts Payable, Payroll, and Accounts Receivable transactions can be seen under the QuickBooks Online Not Specified category. This is because the related transactions such as Pay Bills and Receive Payment cannot be divided into different locations.
Some users may want to remove the category status in QBO. Even for this, a category can be assigned to Not Specified. It can be assigned initially by filtering the reports. The filters can be based on class or location. If you are assigning the location and classes to the transactions, the profit & loss and balance sheet report can also be customized.
The balance sheet report cannot be filtered as the headers are not associated with classes. Even if you see the classes column for the balance sheet, then it will not be accurate. This is because the headers, i.e., Account Payable and Accounts Receivable, are not sorted by a class that you assigned to them. It results in QuickBooks Online Not Specified Status. However, the profit & loss report can be filtered by class. This is possible due to the details that are associated with classes.
Both profit & loss and balance sheet reports can be filtered by class. This happens when saving the location on the transaction. It gets associated with both detail and header columns. With the help of this, the Not Specified status can also be removed from a report.
You may find the Not Specified category while you run the reports such as profit & loss, sales by customer, and balance sheet. Moreover, some journal entries can also detect this category. This happens when the amount you see in the report is not linked with any class or location. Depending upon your requirement, you can assign the category. However, always remember to have complete knowledge about assigning class and location categories.