An Accountant’s Copy is a version of your company file your QuickBooks accountant(s) can use to make changes while you continue to work in your company file. In the end, when your accountants are done, you can then import your accountant’s changes into your company file.
If you are using Advanced Inventory to manage inventory in the Enterprise edition of QuickBooks accounting business software, only if you turn off the Advanced Inventory preference can you create the Accountant’s Copy. In this case, donot forget to turn it back on once the Accountant’s Copy has been created. If your accountants enter changes that will affect inventory, the items will be under the unspecified location. Once the modifications are imported, you will then need to manually change the site location for those items or transactions. It is important for you to remember that, you cannot create an Accountant’s Copy if you have transactions that need to be sent to Intuit for processing, as Assisted Payroll or Direct Deposit payments for example. Thus, send all such pending transactions before you create an Accountant’s Copy.
An additional information you should know about the Accountant’s Copy, is that when you create it, you set a dividing date. You work with transactions dated after this particular dividing date, and your QuickBooks accountant(s) work with transactions dated on or before the set dividing date.

How does this work?

First you create an Accountant’s Copy and send it to your accountant(s). In addition to your current way of giving your accountant files (e-mail, disk, FTP), you can also use the Intuit Web service, called Accountant’s Copy File Transfer. After you have completed this step you can continue working on transactions dated after the dividing date you set. When your accountant’s work is complete, he or she will send you an accountant’s change file. It is advisable that you review it before importing changes into your company file. While your accountant is working with the Accountant’s Copy, you can continue to work in the current period (after the dividing date). But note that, to prevent your work from conflicting with your accountant’s work, there are limitations to what you can do after creating an Accountant’s Copy.

Limitations observed by an accounting services provider

As I mentioned before, in the case of Transactions, you can work only on transactions dated after the dividing date.
For Accounts there is more than one limitation, these being:
- Although you can add a new account, but you cannot add a new subaccount to an existing account
- In the case of existing accounts, you cannot edit, merge, or make an existing account inactive and where new accounts are concerned you can edit an account or make any account inactive that you created while your accountant has the Accountant’s Copy.
In the case of Lists (other than Chart of Accounts), you can edit, sort, and make list items inactive, but you cannot delete or merge list items.
Reconciling your accounts is possible while your accountant has an Accountant’s Copy, but take note of a couple of limitations. All reconciliations that include transactions in period after the dividing date, are saved and will not be undone. Thus, to prevent conflicts with the changes made by your accountant(s), reconciliations that include transactions dated on or before the dividing date will be undone when you import your accountant’s changes. Always keep this in mind. Additionally, if your accountant has reconciled or undone reconciliation for any period, any reconciliation you did, will be undone when you import your accountant’s changes.

Author's Bio: 

I am part of the QuickBooks advisor team within Presti&Naegele, a top accounting services provider. While providing QuickBooks assistance to small business accountants, we came across several interesting facts about QuickBooks, which might be of help to you. Keep tuned.