How to send QuickBooks Online clients their uncategorized list

Every month the same thing happens. Twenty or thirty transactions land in Uncategorized Expense or Ask My Accountant. Someone exports them to a spreadsheet, emails it to the client, and waits. The client replies to half of them, in a different email thread, two weeks late. This guide sets up a monthly routine where each client gets their list on a fixed day, answers inside QuickBooks or in one reply, and your team can see who hasn’t answered.

There are three ways to do it: the native Ask client request in the accountant view, the Request more info column in Bank transactions, and a scheduled report as a fallback. I’ll cover all three and when each one fits.

What you need

Intuit Accountant Suite (formerly QuickBooks Online Accountant). The Core plan is free. Intuit’s pricing page lists Accelerate at $149/month starting January 20, 2027, and a separate Books Close add-on at $8 per onboarded client per month (up to 50 clients) or $6 (over 50), billed from January 21, 2027. Intuit is reshuffling where its month-end tools live, so check which screens you actually see in your account before you build a process around them.
A client on a QuickBooks Online subscription. Intuit’s help article says transaction info requests work in all QuickBooks Online plans, QuickBooks Ledger and Intuit Accountant Suite, but not QuickBooks Solopreneur.
The client needs their own QuickBooks login to answer native requests. If your client never logs in, skip to step 5.
Optional: a paid tool built for this job. Uncat lists $9/month per client. Financial Cents sells a Month-End Close add-on at $5/month per client. More on those at the end.

Step by step

1. Decide what counts as “uncategorized”

Write down the accounts your firm treats as parking spots. Usually that’s Uncategorized Expense, Uncategorized Income and Ask My Accountant, plus any suspense account you set up yourself. Use the same list for every client. If one bookkeeper parks things in Ask My Accountant and another uses a custom “Suspense” account, the monthly list will always be incomplete.

Also agree on a cutoff. I’d use: everything dated in the prior month that’s still in one of those accounts on the 3rd business day.

2. Native route A: Ask client from Books review

This is the cleanest option when the transactions are already posted.

In Intuit Accountant Suite, open the client’s QuickBooks Online company and select Books review.
Go to the Transaction review tab. QuickBooks flags uncategorized transactions, transactions without payees and unapplied payments here.
Select the transactions you want explained. In the Actions pop-up, select Ask client.
The Create a request form fills in a name and description for you. Edit the due date. I’d give clients 7 days.
Select Create. The client gets an email telling them to open QuickBooks.

The client answers under My accountant, then the Requests tab. You’ll see replies back in Books review under Client requests, then View all requests. To see status across all clients, Intuit points you to All Apps > Clients > Client list, then the Bookkeeping tab.

Rewrite the auto-filled description into something a busy owner will read. For example:

“Hi Maria, 14 transactions from September need a one-line note: what it was and which job or location it was for. If you have a receipt, attach it. Due Friday the 10th. Anything you don’t recognize, just say ‘don’t know’ and we’ll dig in.”

3. Native route B: Request more info in Bank transactions

For items still sitting in the bank feed, not yet posted, use the request column instead.

Go to Banking > Bank transactions.
On the transaction, select the message icon (+) in the Request more info column.
Pick the person, then type your question or choose Ask for more info or Ask for receipt.
Select Add message.

The recipient can answer or upload the document. Intuit says its AI, Intuit Intelligence, checks the reply and can ask follow-up questions. You can switch that off in Inbox > Manage settings. If your clients get confused by automated follow-ups, I’d turn it off for the first month and see how replies come in.

4. Put it on a monthly schedule

Native requests don’t send themselves. Someone still has to open each client on the right day. Make that a recurring project so nobody forgets.

Go to All Apps > Work > Projects > Manage templates and select Create template.
Name it “Monthly uncategorized request” and set Repeat to monthly.
Add tasks with Offset due dates tied to the project due date. Example, with the project due on the 20th:
- Pull the list and send the request: 15 days before (around the 5th)
- Check replies and recode: 10 days before
- Second nudge to anyone who hasn’t answered: 8 days before
- Phone call to anyone still silent: 5 days before
Save the template, then use Create Project for each client.

I couldn’t confirm in Intuit’s help center that Ask client requests send automatic reminders. Plan on the second nudge being a manual task, which is why it’s in the template.

5. Workaround: a scheduled report for clients who never log in

Some clients will never open My accountant. For them, email the list instead.

Run a Transaction Detail by Account report, filtered to your uncategorized accounts, date range Last month. Show Date, Payee, Memo/Description and Amount.
Select Save customization, name it “Uncategorized for review”, and save.
Go to Reports > Custom reports and find the saved report. Intuit’s help article says you can create a schedule from the dropdown next to it, so the report runs at regular intervals and goes by email. Add the client’s email and set it to monthly on the 4th. The exact labels have moved around between versions, so follow what your screen shows.

In the email body, tell them exactly how to answer: “Reply to this email with one line per transaction, like ‘Sept 12, $412, Home Depot: materials for the Ellis job.’” Then someone on your team recodes from the reply. It’s one-way and manual on your side, but the list goes out on time without anyone remembering.

Intuit notes that some custom report management options aren’t available in Simple Start, so test the schedule on each client’s plan.

6. Know when to pay for a tool instead

If you have more than 15 or 20 clients on this routine, the manual parts add up. Two options built for exactly this:

Uncat syncs with QuickBooks Online, asks the client about uncategorized transactions, and writes the answers back. It lists $9/month per client.
Financial Cents has a Month-End Close add-on for uncategorized transactions at $5/month per client (its help article on the older ReCats feature listed $4, so check the current price). Clients answer through a magic link with no password.

Worked example: 25 clients on Uncat is $225/month. If the manual version takes 30 minutes per client per month, that’s 12.5 hours. Do your own math with your own hourly cost.

Common mistakes

Sending the raw auto-filled request text. Clients ignore anything that looks like a system email. Put their name, the count and the due date in the first line.
No due date. Without one, “later” wins. Seven days works for most small business owners.
Using different parking accounts across bookkeepers. Your list is only as complete as your naming discipline.
Waiting until quarter-end. Three months of uncategorized transactions is a pile nobody remembers. Monthly lists get better answers.
Not tracking who answered. Use the Bookkeeping tab or a project task, not your memory.

When it’s worth getting help

If you’ve got a handful of clients, the native requests plus a recurring project will cover you. Where firms usually get stuck is the mix: some clients answer in QuickBooks, some by email, some never, and the chasing falls on one person. If you want that wired up so the list, the nudges and the escalation happen on their own, that’s the kind of thing I do. See the QuickBooks Online page or check the accounting cost calculator to see if it’s worth paying for.