Unless you're just starting a new business, most of your accounts probably already have balances -- you've made sales, paid bills, perhaps bought inventory and conducted a variety of other business activities that affect accounts' balances. For example, if you've deposited money in your business's bank account, that account has a balance. In this step, you'll enter those balances into MYOB AccountEdge.
You're not required to enter account balances in order to start using MYOB AccountEdge, but your financial records may not be completely accurate if you don't.
The balance amounts you enter here should be for the last day prior to your conversion month (that is, the month you begin using AccountEdge). If the current month is your conversion month and you've made some transactions already this month (sales or purchases, for example), don't include those transactions in your accounts' opening balances. Instead, enter these amounts using transactions in MYOB AccountEdge, to ensure that you have a complete record of your business activities for the month.
The types of accounts that you'll enter opening balances for depend upon whether your conversion month is the first month of your fiscal year or whether it is another month of your fiscal year. Choose the information that is correct for your company file:
Enter your account balances as positive numbers. (Don't, for example, enter asset amounts as positive numbers and liability amounts as negative numbers.) AccountEdge knows whether each account should have a debit or credit balance. Enter a negative amount only if an account has a negative balance.
If a non-zero amount appears in the "Amount left to be allocated" field, your accounts are out of balance. There are several reasons why your accounts may be out of balance. (To learn why a non-zero amount remains to be allocated)
If you leave a non-zero amount in the "Amount left to be allocated" field, the amount is assigned to the Historical Balancing account. If you balance the accounts later, the amount in the Historical Balancing account will return to zero.
The Historical Balancing account is used during the setup process to track the difference between the opening balances you'll enter for your asset accounts and the opening balances you'll enter for your liability and equity accounts.
In traditional accounting terms, assets should always equal liabilities and capital; AccountEdge doesn't allow unbalanced transactions (transactions whose debit and credit amounts aren't equal) to be recorded, but this account allows you to continue to use AccountEdge if your beginning balances aren't balanced. (You won't see the Historical Balancing account in this window, but it will appear in your list of Equity accounts in all other lists of accounts in AccountEdge.)