Creating accounts

Step 7: Enter your detail accounts’ historical balances (optional)

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

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

The Account Historical Balances window should be displayed.

  1. For your asset, liability and equity accounts (also known as “balance sheet accounts”), click the Balance Sheet selection at the top of the window, then enter the ending balances for each account for the selected month.
Exception: Your Current Year Earnings account The balance of the equity account called Current Year Earnings is incremented automatically during the course of your normal Accounting Plus business activity. As a result, you can’t enter a historical balance for the Current Year Earnings account.
  1. For income, cost of sales and expense accounts (also known as “profit and loss accounts” or “P&L accounts”), click the P&L selection at the top of the window, then enter the net activity for each account for the selected month.
Warning: Historical balances affect the P&L accounts’ opening balances displayed in this window
When you enter historical balances for income, cost of sales, or expense accounts, keep in mind that Accounting Plus will change the opening balances that’s displayed in the Account Historical Balances window for those accounts to reflect the historical entries you make.

If, for example, your fiscal year runs from January to December and your conversion month is July, you should have entered opening balances for your income, cost of sales and expense accounts that indicated those accounts’ net activity for January through June. Accounting Plus, however, considers the opening balances as June’s historical balance, not the entire January-through-June time period. If you now enter historical balances for January through May, those balances will be subtracted from the June activity figure.
  1. You can enter historical amounts for all months that preceded your conversion month, except for the month that immediately preceded your conversion month.

There is one exception to this rule, however: If your conversion month occurred at the beginning of a new fiscal year, you can enter historical amounts for your income, cost of sales and expense accounts for the month preceding your conversion month.

  1. Click OK.

Creating accounts - Step 7