Enter opening cashbook and general ledger balances

Steps 4 and 5 of the opening balance migration: establish starting cash and bank balances, then the general ledger balances, last. The general ledger comes last because it consolidates the summary of every sub-ledger, so a difference between sub-ledger totals and the control accounts shows up here (why the sequence is mandatory). They follow the customer and supplier balances.

1. Cashbook balance entry.
2. General ledger balance entry.

Cashbook balance entry

• Purpose: Establish opening balances for your active operating bank accounts and cash drawers.
• Timing: After outstanding customer receipts (RVs) and supplier payments (PVs) are imported, and after final legacy bank reconciliations are completed.
• Preparation: Ensure all bank accounts and cash drawers are created as cashbooks and linked to their respective GL accounts in the Cashbook Applet and Chart of Accounts Applet.

How a cashbook balance is different from a GL balance

A cashbook’s balance (what Query Cashbook Transaction, Cash Level and Bank Reconciliation show) is the sum of cashbook transaction lines. Those lines are written only when a Receipt Voucher, Payment Voucher, POS settlement, Cash Transfer or Cash Adjustment reaches FINAL. A journal keyed in the Ledger and Journal applet — including the GL opening balance in Step 5 — creates no cashbook line. So if you enter your bank balances only as GL opening balances, the General Ledger is right but every cashbook starts at zero, and the first bank reconciliation can never agree.

Executing the cashbook setup

1. Create a temporary cashbook named Opening Cashbook in the Cashbook applet, pointing at an opening-balance suspense GL code, with a settlement method of its own.
2. For each real bank account and cash drawer, create a Cash Transfer from Opening Cashbook to that cashbook for its reconciled balance at the cutoff date, and set it to FINAL. FINAL writes both the cashbook lines (the sending line negative, the receiving line positive) and the journal — Dr the receiving cashbook’s GL code / Cr the suspense code behind Opening Cashbook.
3. Because those transfers have already posted the bank GL balances, leave the bank and cash GL codes out of the GL opening balance in Step 5 — or the bank balance is posted twice. The suspense code behind Opening Cashbook is cleared by the Step 5 entry instead.

Post-upload verification

• Open the Cashbook applet and view Query Cashbook Transaction and Cash Level. Confirm that each cashbook’s balance matches the reconciled bank statement as of the cutoff date.
• The unapplied Receipt and Payment Vouchers imported in Steps 2 and 3 also wrote cashbook lines into Opening Cashbook (that is why their settlement method points there, not at a live bank) — they net against the transfers.

Common mistakes

• Double-counting: entering a bank balance both as a Cash Transfer and as a line of the GL opening balance journal posts it twice. Pick the transfer and exclude the bank codes from the journal.
• Zero cashbooks: entering bank balances only in the GL leaves every cashbook at zero, and Bank Reconciliation will show the whole opening balance as a permanent variance.

General ledger balance entry

• Purpose: Record starting trial balance values (assets, liabilities, and equity) to establish the general ledger opening balance.
• Timing: The final step of the migration process, executed only after all sub-ledger opening balances (Stock, AR, AP, Cashbook) are finalized and verified.
• Preparation: Retrieve the finalized trial balance or balance sheet report from the legacy system as of the cutoff date.

Executing the ledger entry

You can enter General Ledger opening balances using one of two methods:

Method A: Opening Balance Tab (Recommended)

1. Open the Chart of Account applet, go to Companies, open your company and switch to the Ledgers tab.
2. Click on your Primary Ledger (the Opening Balance tab exists on primary ledgers only).
3. Open the Opening Balance tab and use Add GL Code to add a line per account.
4. Input the debit or credit starting balance for each GL account as of the cutoff date — excluding the bank and cash codes already posted by the cash transfers in Step 4.
5. Click Save. The balances are saved as an opening-balance journal on the primary ledger, and a Financial Report view of that journal (trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet) opens from the same tab — use it for the check below.

Method B: Manual Journal Entry

1. Open the Ledger and Journal applet.
2. Create a new journal transaction dated as of the cutoff date (e.g., 2024-12-31).
3. Debit all asset accounts (including bank, accounts receivable control, and inventory control).
4. Credit all liability and equity accounts (including accounts payable control).
5. Offset any trial balance imbalance temporarily to an Opening Balance Equity account to investigate discrepancies.
6. Finalize the journal entry.

Post-upload verification

• If you used Method A, open the Financial Report view on the Opening Balance tab. If you used Method B, the Financial Report applet only shows the balances after you run Month End Processing for the cutoff month and create a snapshot — a snapshot reads the monthly summaries that month-end writes, not the journals directly.
• Confirm that Total Debits equal Total Credits, and that the Balance Sheet matches the legacy system’s finalized balance sheet.

Common mistakes

• Unmapped Retained Earnings: Ensure your company ledger’s default GL accounts tab has the Retained Earnings account correctly mapped before saving balances.
• Sub-ledger Mismatches: Entering GL balances that do not reconcile with the physical stock valuation, customer outstanding, or supplier outstanding totals.

What success looks like for this part

The checks under each Post-upload verification above pass: each cashbook’s balance matches the reconciled bank statement as of the cutoff date, total debits equal total credits, and the balance sheet matches the legacy system’s finalized balance sheet. Then run the whole migration’s success check, before anyone posts a live document.

Related documentation

• Opening Balance Migration Guide: the sequence and the whole migration’s success check.
• Cashbook Applet and Chart of Account Applet: the Cash Transfer and the Opening Balance tab.
• Bank Reconciliation Applet.