Enter category opening balances

Before you start

• Check your VAT Scheme and Accounts Start Date is correct. See Set up financial year, accounting dates and VAT
• Make sure you have a copy of your trial balance from your accountant

Here you enter a value (Debit or Credit) for each category from the trial balance provided by your Accountant or taken from your previous system.

The total value of all opening balances must balance to conform to bookkeeping rules.

This means the total amount of all the values in the Debit column must equal the total value of all the values in the Credit column.

When the Debit and Credit total don't match, we add the difference to the special Opening Balances category (9998), which is used for this purpose.

In general, your opening balances should balance, so if there is value on your Opening Balance catgeory, check you have entered the values from your trial balance, for your bank accounts correctly.

Things to consider

You can't enter opening balance for bank accounts or the Trade Debtors and Trade Creditors accounts here. Bank opening balances are entered separately.

Read our guide Enter an opening balance for a bank account

Enter opening balances

1. From More, choose Settings, then Business Settings, and find the Opening Balances section.
2. Select Category opening balances.
3. Enter the date for your opening balances.
4. This must be on or before the date you've set as the start date for your accounts.
5. Enter reference so you can easily see which transactions are opening balances on your reports.
6. Your bank accounts are shown at the top.
   Start from the first row where no category is entered.
7. Choose a category from the drop-down.
8. Add further details if required.
9. Enter a Debit or Credit value from you trial balance.
10. Repeat for all your remaining categories and Save.

If you don't have a full list of opening balances you can come back and finish this at any time. You can also update your existing opening balances at any time.

Opening balances for VAT

This value you enter for VAT on sales or VAT on purchases here as an opening balance is not included on your VAT return.

• Record your first invoice