Set up land, each vehicle group and each loan as its own account, enter the balances as of your cutover date from the lender’s statement and the closing documents (not from whatever the old system last showed), and split every loan payment so principal reduces the loan and only interest hits expenses. Land never depreciates. If any of it landed in Opening Balance Equity during the move, that is the first thing to clear. Here is the sequence, with numbers.
Industry systems keep land, trucks and equipment loans in places QuickBooks does not: a fixed-asset module, a job-cost overhead schedule, a loan sub-ledger. When the books move, the general-ledger balances usually come across, but the detail often does not. Trucks arrive as one lump called “Equipment,” the loan arrives as a single balance with no payment history, and any balance that had no matching entry can end up in Opening Balance Equity. Intuit describes that account as the one that “automatically tracks” opening balances so the books stay in balance (its opening-balance help article, updated 8/25/2026) — useful as a holding pen, wrong as a permanent home. Your target is an Opening Balance Equity balance of zero.
| What you own or owe | Account in QuickBooks | Rule of thumb |
|---|---|---|
| Land | Fixed asset: Land | Its own account. Never depreciated. |
| Buildings and improvements | Fixed asset: Buildings | Separate from land, with accumulated depreciation alongside. |
| Trucks and vehicles | Fixed asset: Vehicles | Cost here; accumulated depreciation in a paired account. |
| Equipment | Fixed asset: Equipment | Same pattern as vehicles. |
| Each loan | Liability: one account per loan (e.g. “Loan – Truck 1”) | Long Term if repayable over more than a year, Other Current if within a year (Intuit’s own split). |
One liability account per loan, not one shared “Notes Payable” bucket, is what lets you compare each balance to its own lender statement later. At year-end, ask your CPA whether the next twelve months of principal should be shown as current.
The IRS states it plainly in Publication 946: “You cannot depreciate the cost of land because land does not wear out, become obsolete, or get used up.” Two practical consequences. First, if your old system parked land inside a depreciating “Real Estate” class, split it out, or the books will quietly depreciate something that should stay at cost. Second, the cost of land is more than the purchase price: the same publication says it generally includes clearing, grading, planting and landscaping, and the basis of real property also picks up settlement costs such as legal and recording fees, survey charges, owner’s title insurance, and back taxes the seller owed that you agreed to pay.
So pull the closing statement, not the old ledger balance. If you bought land with a building on it, the price has to be allocated between the two; ask your CPA for the allocation and keep the appraisal or tax-assessment basis they used. Paving, fencing and similar improvements are a different class again, so flag them rather than folding them into land.
Intuit’s help article on recording a loan for an asset (updated 8/5/2026) gives the skeleton: create the liability account, then a journal entry with the loan amount as a credit to the liability and the same amount as a debit to the asset. It also says trade-in, down payment, fees and taxes are considered when assessing the original value of a purchase and to consult your accountant — meaning it does not walk through them. Here is how that looks for a truck:
For a truck you bought before the switch, you are not booking the purchase; you are loading the position at your cutover date. Take three numbers from three different sources: original cost from the purchase paperwork ($62,000), accumulated depreciation to the cutover date from your CPA’s depreciation schedule (say $18,000), and the loan balance from the lender’s statement dated closest to cutover (say $31,400). The asset is carried at $44,000 net, the loan at $31,400, and the $12,600 difference is equity that should already be visible on your old trial balance. If instead it shows up as Opening Balance Equity, that is your signal to reconcile against the old system’s closing trial balance and reclassify it.
Intuit’s loan-setup article says to record each loan payment to the loan account and each interest payment to an expense account. The classic error after a switch is letting the bank feed categorize the whole payment as “Loan payment” expense or as one line to the liability. Take a $1,050 monthly payment where the lender’s statement shows $180 of interest: $870 reduces the loan, $180 is interest expense. Categorize all $1,050 as expense and the loan balance never falls while expenses are overstated by $870 a month, about $10,440 a year. Categorize all of it to the liability and the interest disappears. Either way the fix is a bank rule with a split, or a recurring entry you adjust when the lender’s amortization changes.
When all five agree, your CPA gets a balance sheet they can depreciate and file from instead of one they have to rebuild.
No. The IRS says in Publication 946 that land cannot be depreciated because it does not wear out, become obsolete, or get used up. Keep land in its own fixed-asset account at cost, and depreciate buildings and improvements separately according to your CPA’s schedule.
Debit the Vehicles asset account for the full cost including tax and fees, credit the bank account for the down payment, and credit a dedicated loan liability account for the financed amount. For example, a $62,000 truck with $12,000 down is a $62,000 debit, a $12,000 credit to Bank and a $50,000 credit to the loan account.
Split each payment. The principal portion goes to the loan liability account and the interest portion goes to an interest expense account, using the split shown on the lender’s statement. Recording the whole payment to expense leaves the loan balance too high and expenses overstated.
Opening Balance Equity is where QuickBooks offsets opening balances that have no other side. A leftover balance usually means an asset or loan was loaded without its matching equity, or history was only partly moved. Reconcile it to the old system’s closing trial balance and reclassify it to the correct accounts.
If the move is still ahead of you, our Foundation to QuickBooks page covers the conversion, and our construction bookkeeping team can tie out fixed assets and loans for you.
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Founder of Numerawise Solutions, established MMXXIV in Atlanta. Intuit ProAdvisor Gold tier. Former Intuit Technical Support engineer. Has personally led two hundred accounting software conversions for US small businesses since founding the practice. Reachable directly at [email protected].