Parent Account Issues

What should you do if CFO Scoreboard finds a parent account issue in your Excel files?

Not to worry, just check out these two cases and make sure you understand them.

1. Make sure your parent accounts don't have any accounting figures of their own

CFO Scoreboard treats "parent accounts" like group labels, meaning they do not have any values of their own. If CFO Scoreboard finds an accounting row that looks like a parent account (due to e.g indention) but it has a value, then it will complain. Here's an example:

If this is the case in your Excel files, then you'll need to find a way to delete or move these numbers.

Sometimes these numbers are just subtotals.  If that's the case, you can simply delete them. CFO Scoreboard doesn't need your subtotals in the Excel files, because it calculates them internally anyway.

Other times, these numbers are actual real figures that really belong to a "miscellaneous" category. If this is the case, you can simply move these values down into a catch-all kind of account, like so:

2. Make sure your chart of accounts is consistent over time

This one is huge! You need to make sure that what starts out as a parent account always stays a parent account, and what starts out as a child account always stays a child account. So, do understand that sometimes the issue is not within your Excel file, but it has to do with CFO Scoreboard's trying to consolidate your new data with your old data.

This is most commonly a problem with QuickBooks. If you notice that QuickBooks is generating newer statements for you that don't match the same parent-child hierarchy of your older data that you already uploaded, just follow these steps to fix the problem:

1. Take note of the entire date range that you've uploaded into CFO Scoreboard. Let's say your previously-uploaded account data goes from January 2012 up to December 2014, and now you're trying to upload January 2015.
2. In order to avoid parent-child errors, you need to re-export the entire date range so that QuickBooks will keep the chart of accounts consistent. In this example, you would create a new P&L and Balance Sheet export that covers from January 2012 all the way to January 2015.
3. Make sure to follow our QuickBooks instructions to ensure that your data will be formatted the right way.
4. Once you have these two documents, upload them into CFO Scoreboard!
5. When finished, double-check that the new month (Jan 2015 in this example) has been uploaded properly.

Still having trouble?

No problem at all. If you've checked all these possibilities, tried to upload again, and it   still won't work for you, just send an email to help@cfoscoreboard.com, and we'll assist you as soon as possible.