Administration > System Initialization > Opening Balances > G/L Accounts Opening Balance:
De-select the Profit and Loss accounts and select OK.
The Opening Balance Account should be the G/L Opening Balance account set up in the chart of accounts, if not, change it to that account.
IMPORTANT: Change the Date and all the Due Dates to the date of the opening balance (E.g. – Enter beginning balance sheet account amounts effective 12/31/xx). NOTE: AR and AP accounts do not allow postings to them so alternate accounts such as Beginning Balance AR and Beginning Balance AP accounts should be used for opening amounts to those accounts. Debit amounts are positive and credit amounts are negative with no regard to the natural type of the account.
IMPORTANT: If you hit enter instead of tab, it will save and close your entries and put the difference to the G/L Opening Balance account you picked at the top of the screen. If you do this, go back into the G/L Accounts Opening Balance screen, change your dates accordingly, and continue entering the opening balances but now an additional entry has to be made to the G/L Opening Balance account to zero that account out. When you are finished, run the Balance Sheet and Trial Balance reports to make sure they are correct.
Journal Entry Screen:
Next, journal entry the changes to the balance sheet amounts for 1/1/xx to 1/31/xx and all profit and loss activity for 1/1/xx to 1/31/xx effective 1/31/xx and so on for each month until all history is entered. Once all history has been entered, the outstanding AR and AP should be entered via invoices/credit memos/debit memos with the offset accounts being the Beginning Balance AR and Beginning Balance AP accounts, which should net to zero once all outstanding AR and AP amounts are entered. When entering outstanding cash entries, debit and credit the cash account for the same amount as the balance has already been entered via journal entries. If importing or entering inventory, use a Beginning Balance Inventory account for the offset account, then the journal entry(s) created must be reversed as all the balances have already been entered via journal entries and the Beginning Balance Inventory account should net to zero. When you are finished, run the Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, and Trial Balance reports to make sure they are correct. Be sure to close each year once everything is balanced in order to roll up the prior year’s revenues and expenses into the retained earnings account and run the financial reports again for verification.