Hello- accounting has come with a new break down of sales and cost gl accounts and asked me to make changes to our item records. In this case non-inventory for resale. NetSuite will not let me do it and it seems like the answer is that if the item exists in previously closed periods you just can't change it. Can anyone verify that this is the case or if there is a way to change it other than creating it as a new item? Thanks.

What are you trying to change?

Accounting preferences > Do not update cogs and asset accounts on existing transactions when accounts are changed.

With the feature @Nicholas LaHara described you can change the cogs account but you can’t change income accounts I would also look at using segments better instead of different account. Like use class to represent what you would be using the separate accounts for

Thank y'all for the responses. Attachment: accounting wants us to change both income & expense accounts. I had attempted to do this with a csv import and it would error out with the detailed message "The G/L". I tried just manually updating the record and it did let me change the cogs account but not the income as AI1 mentioned but the accounting preferences > do not update flag is NOT set. So I believe I have my answer. I need to find out if accounting wants the cogs account updated with the change or not. We should definitely be using segments better and even though some are set we really don't pay attention to them. Unless I find some other option for the income account it looks like an item schema rework is in my future.

You may have to do the tedious method. Append the name/id of the previous items with “-OLD”, inactivate them, and then recreate the new items with the original Name/ID and set the proper accounts. You save historical information, but use the new accounts going forward.