How to View Journal Entries in QuickBooks Online and Desktop

The fastest way to view journal entries in QuickBooks Online is the Journal report: go to Reports, open Journal, set your date range, then filter Transaction type to Journal Entry. That last step is the one everybody skips, and it is why the report so often looks wrong. In QuickBooks Desktop the equivalent lives under Reports > Accountant & Taxes > Journal, filtered the same way.

Last updated August 2026. QuickBooks Online is mid rollout of a redesigned interface, so some menus carry two names. Both are noted below.

Why the Journal report shows more than your journal entries

QuickBooks calls it the Journal report, but it does not mean the general journal in the narrow sense. By default it renders every transaction in the period as debits and credits: invoices, checks, deposits, bill payments, the lot. On an active company file that is thousands of rows, and the twelve manual entries you are actually looking for are buried somewhere inside.

The fix takes ten seconds. Open the report, select Customize (or the filter icon), find Filters, and set Transaction type equals Journal Entry. Now the report shows manual journal entries and nothing else. Use Save as to keep it as a custom report so you never rebuild the filter, and pick a generous date range while you are in there, because the default period is usually narrower than the thing you are hunting for.

How to view journal entries in QuickBooks Online, step by step

1. Open Reports from the left navigation.
2. Search for Journal and open the report.
3. Set Report period to cover the dates in question. Widen it if you are unsure; an entry dated outside your range simply will not appear, with no warning that it exists.
4. Open Customize, expand Filters, and set Transaction type to Journal Entry.
5. Select Run report. Each entry shows its date, entry number, accounts, memo and the debit and credit amounts.
6. Select Save as and name it something like Journal entries only, so it is one click next month.

Click any row and QuickBooks opens the entry itself, where you can edit it, reverse it, or read the memo that explains why it exists. If there is no memo, that is worth fixing while you are there.

How to find a journal entry when you only know one detail

Reports are the right tool when you want the full list. When you know one fact about an entry and nothing else, three other routes are faster.

• You know the amount. Use the search icon in the top bar and type the number. QuickBooks searches transaction amounts and returns matches across every transaction type.
• You know which account it touched. Open the chart of accounts, find the account and select Account history (called the register in Desktop). Every entry that hit that account is there in date order, which is exactly what you want when a balance looks wrong and you are working out what caused it.
• You know roughly when it was posted, or who posted it. Go to Settings > Audit log and filter by user, by date, or by event. The audit log records the entry's creation and every later edit, so it answers who and when, not just what.

The account history route is the underrated one. Most journal entry hunts start with a balance sheet number that looks off by a suspiciously round amount, and opening the register for that one account finds the culprit faster than any report filter.

How to view all journal entries in QuickBooks Desktop

Desktop puts the same report one menu deeper. Go to Reports > Accountant & Taxes > Journal, set the date range, then select Customize Report, open the Filters tab, choose Transaction Type and set it to Journal. Same principle as QuickBooks Online: without the filter you are reading the whole file in debit and credit form.

Two Desktop shortcuts are worth knowing. With any transaction open, Reports > Transaction Journal shows the debit and credit detail behind that single transaction, which is how you see what an invoice or a payroll check actually posted to. And Memorize Report keeps your filtered journal report on the Memorized Reports list so it survives to next month.

How do I find a deleted journal entry?

In QuickBooks Online, deleted transactions are not recoverable with an undo button, but they are not gone from the record either. Open Settings > Audit log and filter Events to deleted or voided transactions. The log keeps the full detail of what was deleted, including the accounts and amounts, so you can read it and re enter the entry by hand. Set the date filter to when the deletion happened rather than when the entry was dated, since those are usually different days.

QuickBooks Desktop has a dedicated report instead: Reports > Accountant & Taxes > Voided/Deleted Transactions Summary, with a Detail version that shows the individual lines. As in QuickBooks Online, set the date range to cover when the deletion likely happened, not the transaction date.

Why an entry you posted is not showing up

Four causes account for nearly all of these, in rough order of how often they turn out to be the answer.

• The report period does not include it. Overwhelmingly the most common. An entry dated the last day of the prior year will not show in a report starting January 1.
• The accounting method is flipping it. Reports run on a cash basis suppress accrual side activity, so an accrual entry can be invisible on a cash basis report and perfectly present on an accrual one.
• It was posted to a different company file. Sounds obvious, and it is a real answer more often than anyone admits when someone works across several client files in the same browser.
• It is not a journal entry. If it was entered as a check, a deposit or an expense, the Transaction type filter you just applied is excluding it by design. Clear the filter and search by amount instead.

When the entry you are hunting should never have been a journal entry

Very often the reason an entry is hard to find is that it should not have been a journal entry in the first place. A journal entry bypasses the subledgers, so it does not carry a payee the way a bank transaction does, it does not show on Pay bills, and it cannot be matched to a downloaded bank transaction line by line. A single entry summarizing a month of card spending is technically balanced and practically unusable: the forty individual charges that later download from the bank will never match it.

The same problem shows up on the receivables side. An entry posted to Accounts Receivable without a customer name leaves the aging report and the balance sheet disagreeing, which is a genuinely unpleasant thing to unpick at year end and a good reason to keep the work of chasing what customers still owe inside the invoice workflow rather than in the ledger. If your journal entries exist because bank or credit card activity never made it into QuickBooks, the durable fix is to get the real transactions in: convert the PDF statement to a .qbo file and upload it, so each transaction lands as a bank transaction that categorizes, matches and reconciles normally.

Frequently asked questions

How do I view all journal entries in QuickBooks Online?

Open Reports, run the Journal report, set the date range to cover the full period you care about, then use Customize and Filters to set Transaction type to Journal Entry. Without that filter the report includes every transaction in the file rendered as debits and credits, not only the entries you posted by hand.

Where is the journal entry report in QuickBooks Desktop?

Reports > Accountant & Taxes > Journal. Then select Customize Report, open the Filters tab, and set Transaction Type to Journal so the report excludes invoices, checks and deposits. Use Memorize Report to save the filtered version for future periods.

Can I see who created or changed a journal entry?

Yes. In QuickBooks Online the audit log under Settings records who created each entry, who edited it and when, along with what changed. QuickBooks Desktop tracks the same information in the Audit Trail report under Reports, Accountant & Taxes, provided the audit trail has been left on.

How do I find old journal entries from a previous year?

Change the report period on the Journal report rather than relying on the default. Select a custom date range covering the earlier year, or choose All dates if the option is offered. Entries outside the current period are not hidden or archived, they simply fall outside the range the report is running.

Can I export a list of journal entries to Excel?

Yes. Once the Journal report is filtered to Transaction type equals Journal Entry, use the export icon above the report and choose Excel or CSV. This is the usual way to hand a period's adjusting entries to an accountant or an auditor without giving them access to the company file.

Why can't QuickBooks match my bank transaction to a journal entry?

QuickBooks Online can match a downloaded transaction to an entire journal entry when the bank account, amount and date all agree, but it cannot match one to a single line of a multi line entry. It also declines when the transaction is more than about six months old, already matched, or previously reconciled. Turning off suggested matches shows the full candidate list.

For the mechanics of posting entries in the first place, see our guide to the QuickBooks journal entry, which covers the rules QuickBooks enforces and when a journal entry is the wrong tool. Related reading: the QuickBooks trial balance, the QuickBooks audit log, finding a transaction in QuickBooks, and the chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online.