Opening balance
In Arabic الرصيد الافتتاحي
The balance an account carries at the start of a period, or on the day a business moves to a new system, brought forward from the old books.
In plain words
Every report in a new system builds on its opening balances. If receivables open short, every customer statement and aging is wrong from day one, and nobody trusts the new books.
At go-live, balances are entered as one opening journal as at the cut-over date, usually the last day of a closed period. Open invoices and stock are loaded in detail, so the subledgers agree with the ledger.
The common mistake is loading the ledger totals but not the open items behind them. The receivables account is right, yet no customer has a balance to collect.
- Cash
- Dr 20,000
- Receivables
- Dr 45,000
- Inventory
- Dr 135,000
- Payables
- Cr 60,000
- Equity
- Cr 140,000
- Totals
- Dr 200,000 = Cr 200,000
In Axon Suite
How Axon Suite handles it
Axon Suite imports the chart of accounts and opening journals from CSV files. A file imports whole or not at all, with every refused row listed.
Feature
File imports that land whole
Bring in customers, vendors, items, the chart of accounts and journals from a CSV file. Every row passes the same checks as one typed on screen, and one bad row means nothing is saved.
Open: File imports that land whole