Entering an Opening Balance for an Account

In this article:

• Adding an Opening Balance to an Account
• Additional Concepts

You can enter or adjust the opening balances of accounts on your Accounts List / General Ledger / Chart of Accounts. If you are unsure of your opening balances, please contact your accountant. 

Adding an Opening Balance to an Account

To enter an account's opening balance:

1. Go to Accounting > Accounts > Accounts List. The Account List page appears.
2. Click Edit Accounts (located in the top-right corner of the list). The Division Accounts list page appears.
3. For the accounts you want to change, click in the Opening Balance field and enter the amount. 
4. Select the checkbox next to the field (in the column with the lock icon) to lock the opening balance.

   WARNING: If you lock an opening balance and then save your work, you cannot edit these numbers later on. Once a balance is locked, it will remain locked. You can choose not to lock a balance and still save your work.

5. Click Save to save your changes. The system will tell you if it balances or if anything is out of balance.

Additional Concepts

There are times where just entering the outstanding invoices and trust account balances won't give your required result.

1. Adding Income | Expense History to Existing Matters

For companies with long running Actions (jobs) it may be that you wish to transfer to data into the same action within Actionstep.

• This will give you long term visibility into the profit.
• In order to do this you will need to pull the Job P&L's from your prior system as at conversions date
• Using a General Journal, enter the costs and sales into the action - the offsetting profit or loss should be coded to retained earnings.

2. Moving to Actionstep Accounting When in a Period Later Than the Adoption of Your Actionstep System

If you have been using Actionstep without using the Accounting module, you may find that some data needs to be reversed prior to adopting Actionstep Accounting. By using the following process, you will still be able to look back at invoice history without creating an opening balance issue. 

It is strongly recommended you enlist the services of a Certified Consulting Partner to help you with this process.

• Create general journal entries to offset any accounts holding balances (other than debtor or trust accounts).
• If you have not been receipting your payments in Actionstep, you will need to create payments until the list of debtors is a true reflection of the current debtors ledger. Offset this with a bank withdrawal.
• Process a GST return to reflect no unreturned GST in the prior periods.
• Complete a bank reconciliation to the conversion date to remove all items off the unreconciled list and match to the correct opening balance.

At this point, you should have a "clean slate," but also have a job history.

Related Articles

• Getting to Know the Accounts List
• Linking Bank Accounts in the Accounts List
• Adding a General Ledger Account