Creating accounts

Step 6: Enter your detail accounts’ opening balances

Step 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 5 > 6 > 7

If you haven’t already read the Accounts Overview, see Opening balances for more information.

Idea: Enter all your accounts before proceeding
At this point, you’ve created a single account. If you plan to add many accounts to the Accounting Plus system -- for example, if you’re setting up your company for the first time -- we suggest that you perform the following steps again for each account that you plan to set up:

Choose the type of account you want
Enter basic information about the account
Choose a currency for the account (if you’re using Multicurrency)
Enter budgets for the account (optional; detail accounts only)

Then, when you’re finished entering all your accounts, continue with these next two steps.

The Account Opening Balances window should be displayed.

  1. If your conversion month is the first month of your fiscal year, enter the opening balances of your asset, liability and equity accounts only. (The opening balances of all your income, cost of sales and expense accounts should remain zero.)

If your conversion month is not the first month of your fiscal year, enter the opening balances of all your accounts.

You should almost always enter opening balances as positive numbers. Don’t, for example, enter your liability accounts’ balances as negative numbers. Accounting Plus knows whether your accounts usually have positive or negative balances. Enter negative amounts only if accounts have negative balances.

Note: Important information about a few specific accounts
Some of the accounts in your chart of accounts require some “special treatment” when you’re entering opening balances. Please read the following information carefully.

Current Year Earnings One of your most vital accounts is an equity account called Current Year Earnings. The balance of this account is incremented automatically during the course of your normal Accounting Plus business activity. Although this account doesn’t appear in the Account Opening Balances window, don’t worry -- it does exist! Since Accounting Plus calculates the balance of this account automatically, you can’t enter an opening balance for it.

If your conversion month is the first month of your fiscal year, the opening balance of your Current Year Earnings account will be zero. This indicates that your company hasn’t acquired any income in the current year because the year has just begun.

Earnings If you’ve just begun using Accounting Plus, enter your company’s entire previous year’s earnings as the opening balance of your Retained Earnings account.

Main inventory asset account If you plan to use Accounting Plus’s inventory features, don’t enter an opening balance for the account you intend to use to track the value of your company’s inventoried items. You’ll enter this account’s opening balance when you set up your items. See Creating items to learn how to set up your company’s items.
  1. Check the field at the bottom of the window that’s labeled “Amount left to be allocated:”
  • If this field displays $0.00, the total of the opening balances you assigned to your asset accounts equals the total opening balances of your liability and equity accounts.
  • If you didn’t enter an opening balance for your main inventory asset account in the last step, the amount displayed in the “Amount left to be allocated” field won’t be zero -- the amount displayed will equal your opening balance amount for inventory.
  • If the “Amount left to be allocated” field displays an amount other than $0.00 and you aren’t tracking inventory costs, you should review the opening balances you’ve entered to be completely sure you’ve entered the exact amounts. (To keep accurate financial records, it’s important that the total of your asset accounts’ opening balances equals the total of your liability and equity accounts’ opening balances.)
  • If the “Amount left to be allocated” field still doesn’t display $0.00 after you’ve rechecked your opening balances, click the OK button. The amount that appeared in the “Amount left to be allocated” field will be assigned to a special equity account called Historical Balancing.
  1. If you use Multicurrency, enter an opening balance for each foreign currency account. A message will appear asking if you want Accounting Plus to automatically calculate and enter the opening balance of the exchange account.
  2. Click Calculate Now if you want Accounting Plus to automatically calculate and enter the opening balance of the exchange account.
  3. Verify the information in this window, including the current exchange rate.
  4. Click OK.
  5. If you click Cancel, no opening balance will be entered for the exchange account. If you wish, you can manually calculate and enter the opening balance of the exchange account. See Multicurrency Overview for more information.

Creating accounts - Step 6