QuickBooks 2012 1099 Wizard Bug (and workaround)

It’s that time of year – time to file your 1099 MISC forms, and this year is crazier than most. There is a bug in the QuickBooks 1099 Wizard that affects SOME people, and I have a workaround for it. This is only an issue if you are trying to map out an Other Current Asset account.

If you have QuickBooks 2009 through 2012 and are processing 1099′s you want to read this QuickBooks and Beyond article about Processing your 2011 1099 Misc forms.

Now, let’s get into the details of a bug that is in that Wizard.

Here’s a portion of my sample Chart of Accounts. Note that I have several Other Current Asset accounts, and that Prepaid Expense is the first of that type.

I have a bill that used that account, in this case for $120.00 to “Sanwon Industries”.

I’m not an accountant, and I wasn’t sure why you would want to use an Other Current Asset for this situation. Doug Sleeter provided me with this explanation:

Sometimes costs for projects are accumulated on the balance sheet as “assets” until the project (or job) is completed. It’s relevant when the client recognizes revenues using either the “completed contract” or “percentage of completion” method. So when paying for those costs, we often recommend people create QB items that point to “other current assets.” Then at the end of the project, they “close out the jobs” using either journal entries or zero-dollar checks to pull the costs out of the assets and into the expense accounts. Therefore, the 1099 issue could bite people if they don’t map those asset accounts to the correct boxes on the 1099.

Using the QuickBooks 1099 Wizard in QuickBooks 2012 R5 (the current release at the time I’m writing this) I have mapped the Prepaid Expense account.

However, in the confirm entries step, you’ll note that there is an unmapped payment for this amount showing. This is that payment that was mapped to the Prepaid Expense account.This is a problem.

Fortunately, there is a workaround. This issue only occurs if the Other Asset Account is the first in the list. The simple solution is to add another Other Asset Account in the Chart of Accounts that shows before the one that you have used.

If you do this, and you go back to the QuickBooks 1099 Wizard, you’ll see that the problem has been resolved.

After you print your 1099’s I don’t see any reason why you can’t go back and delete the account – but again, there is no guarantee that Intuit will fix this bug for next year…

Thanks to Sam Wilkerson of Intuit for pointing this out to me, Ruth Perryman for answering my dumb question, and Doug Sleeter for his detailed and comprehensive example.

Tags: 1099 Misc, Bugs, QuickBooks 2009, QuickBooks 2010, QuickBooks 2011, QuickBooks 2012

Category: General Tips