Northwind Interiors: Subscription Tier, Two-Dimension Tracking, and Closing the Books

Subscription. Simple Start will not carry this company. It lacks class/location tracking and foreign-currency invoicing; multi-currency is a Plus-and-above feature, and once a foreign-currency transaction exists you cannot simply switch it off. So the floor is Plus.

Dimension mapping.

• Location = city (Portland, Boise, Reno). Location is the dimension that behaves like a place and is the one the owner will filter on most often.
• Class = service line (Design, Install). Classes are the natural home for a P&L segmentation that survives reorganisation of offices.

Design constraints to respect:

1. QBO allows one class and one location per transaction line, not per transaction. A line 'Design work, Reno job' gets Class=Design, Location=Reno. Split lines rather than adding more dimensions.
2. Do not build sub-classes for cities (e.g. Install:Portland). It multiplies maintenance and makes the P&L by Class unreadable.
3. Keep names short and stable; renaming a class does not retroactively fix reports that were exported and saved.
4. Decide the rule for shared costs (owner's salary, software) up front - either leave them unclassified deliberately and document it, or allocate by a fixed percentage. Leaving it undecided is how the 'Uncategorized' column becomes a third of the P&L.

Configuration.

1. Set the closing date to 12/31/2024 with a password (Settings > Advanced > Accounting > Close the books).
2. Run the Closing Date Exception report on a schedule - it lists every change made to a transaction on or before the closing date, with user and timestamp. This is the control that actually catches the March edit; the password alone only slows people down.
3. Remove the 'Exclude from closing date' permission from all standard users (Settings > Manage users). Only the accountant or owner should hold it.

What the closing date does and does not do. It blocks editing/deleting transactions dated on or before the date for users without the exemption. It does not stop new transactions dated in the closed period entered by an exempt user, and it does not stop changes to list items or accounts.

The $1,400. Do not 'fix' it by editing March again. Correct it in the open period: issue a credit memo or a corrective invoice dated today, referencing the original, so the sales tax return already filed and the ledger stay reconcilable. Note in the memo that the original period is closed. If the change also altered the sales tax collected, the difference belongs on the next return as an adjustment, not as a silent restatement of a filed period.

Rebuild in three steps.

1. Verify before you void. Confirm the original $8,400 debit is sitting in Prepaid Insurance (asset), not already expensed, and that the eleven entries net to the correct amount for the elapsed months. Reconcile the prepaid account to a schedule before touching anything.
2. Replace with one documented entry pattern. Preferred: enter one bill or expense dated the premium due date coded to Prepaid Insurance, then a single monthly journal entry (Dr Insurance Expense / Cr Prepaid Insurance) created as a recurring transaction with automatic posting and an end date at the policy expiry. Attach the policy declaration page and the amortization schedule to the first transaction.
3. Void, don't delete. Void the eleven historical entries so the audit trail shows they existed and were superseded. Deleting leaves no trace and is exactly what an auditor will flag.

Why recurring matters here: it converts a memory task into a system task. The failure mode was not bad math - it was eleven opportunities to forget the schedule. If the monthly amount changes mid-policy (endorsement, refund), end the recurring template and start a new one; do not edit past postings.