One of the most important things in working with QuickBooks or any type other type of accounting software is using the right set of accounts to track your financial information.
The following information relates to QuickBooks Premier Accounting Software, but the guidelines really can apply to any accounting software program, whether it is Simply Accounting or Business Visions. More advanced or robust versions of QuickBooks will give you some different options when producing reporting, but as QuickBooks Pro and Premier are the most common versions of the software available, that is what we’ll review.
There are typically a maximum number of types of accounts available for you to choose from.  In QuickBooks there are ten types of balance sheet accounts and five types of P&L accounts.
Although there are numerous changes that can be made to the accounts, there are certain conventions that you must adhere to:
When setting up an account, you must choose from one of the 15 account types.

• The names of the account types are fixed. You can’t add to or change the name of an account type.
• When viewing your list of accounts (Listsà Chart of Accounts Menu) the order of the account types is fixed. You do have the ability to sort the accounts by name or balance, but all accounts stay sorted within their inherent type.
• The default list order for QuickBooks Chart of Accounts is alphanumeric within each account type, but you can change the order of the account within each type by clicking the diamond symbol that precedes each account  name and dragging the account to a new location. Whenever you want to return the list to its original order, choose Re-sort List from the Account menu button near the bottom of the screen.

As you can see from above, the Account Type you choose for the account really does determine a lot of how that account shows up in your reporting.