Opening balances

The Opening Balances page brings in the balances of your accounts when a company starts keeping its books in TrakIT, for example from the closing trial balance of your previous accounting system. TrakIT posts them as one journal entry on the first day of the company’s first financial year.

To open it, select System > Chart of Accounts, then Opening Balances. The button is on the Auto-Posting Default Accounts panel, which appears once the company has a chart of accounts.

Before you start

• Set up the chart of accounts with every account that has a balance. See Setting up accounting.
• Create the company’s first financial year. Opening balances are always dated its first day.
• Have the balances of your accounts as at the day before that date, in the company’s base currency. For accounts in another currency, also have the balance in that currency.

The page

If you have access to more than one company, choose the company at the top. Below it, the page says the date the balances are posted on and the base currency. If the company has no financial year yet, it says so instead.

The table lists every active account of the company that can be posted to, by category and code. Heading accounts, which only group sub-accounts, are not listed. If the company has no such accounts yet, the page asks you to set up the chart of accounts first.

Column	Shows
Account	The account’s category, code and name.
Group	The account group.
Debit, Credit	The opening balance in the base currency. The base currency’s code follows each heading.
Currency Amount	For an account set up for another currency: its currency and the balance in that currency.

If opening balances were posted before, the table shows them.

Enter and post the balances

1. Enter each account’s balance under Debit or Credit, as a positive number. Assets and expenses usually have debit balances; liabilities, equity and income usually have credit balances. Leave accounts with no balance empty.
2. For an account in another currency, also enter the balance in that currency under Currency Amount.
3. Select Post Opening Balances.
4. Confirm.

TrakIT posts one journal entry titled Opening Balances, dated the first day of the first financial year. It appears on the Journal entries page like any other entry.

Nothing is posted, and the page keeps what you typed so you can correct it, when:

• the total of the debits differs from the total of the credits. The message shows both totals and the difference. TrakIT never balances the entry for you: find the difference and correct it.
• an account has both a debit and a credit, or an amount is negative or not a number,
• an account in another currency has a balance without a currency amount, or the other way round,
• only one account has a balance.

To check the result, open the Trial balance as of the first day of the year. Unless other entries are dated that day too, it shows exactly the balances you entered.

Change or clear the balances

You can change the opening balances and post them again as long as the first financial year is open. TrakIT reverses the previous Opening Balances entry and posts a new one; both stay in the journal. To remove the opening balances, empty all the amounts and post: TrakIT reverses the previous entry and posts nothing new.

Once the first financial year is closed, the page says so and the opening balances can no longer be changed.

Who can use this page

Section	Permission	Allows you to
Journal Entries	Read	Open the page and see the opening balances.
Journal Entries	Create	Post opening balances.
Chart of Accounts	Update	See the Opening Balances button on the Chart of Accounts page.

The company list shows the companies you have access to.