Opening balance - trade debtors

Question asked by Jonathan Smith 9 years ago

Hello,

I'm trying to add an opening balance using the debtors tab, whereby I create an invoice in the name of a customer. I have done this a few times but the balance resolutely refuses to carry through to the opening trial balance, which remains at zero for trade debtors.

Is this anything to do with dates? I've used the date 1 day before the opening balance date to create the debtor - ie 31/05 for the debtor, for an opening balance at 01/06. I also tried to input the debtor invoice at 01/06, but system prevents this.

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8 Replies

Ok I got the ticket reviewed, and just to update should anyone be interested, I used the account Trade Debtors. Turns out when entering the brought forward balances, the system is asking for the other side of the double entry - ie income - and the Trade Debtors is updated in the background. So as a result the opening entry was debiting and crediting trade debtors, resulting in a zero balance.

I think this is a bit counter-intuitive as this is a feature is provided to update the trade debtor balance, so intuitively that's what I selected.

Best answer
9 years ago

Hi Jonathan - difficult without the screen but when you go to enter each debtor does the system default to 31/05? If so then I can't see why this isn't working but if not then check the accounting period in Settings, this tells the system what date to default to (I think).

9 years ago

Hi Paul. The system does default to 31/05 for the invoice. This is showing the entry for the opening invoice I have created:

file

And this is the trial balance with nothing showing up on the trade debtors:

file

Do you think I'm overlooking something rather obvious?

9 years ago

I'm stumped - if the invoice shows up in unpaid invoices & aged debtors report and the Trade debtors account (per the TB) shows the balance at that date, then there may well be a bug. If so then best to raise a ticket with support.

9 years ago

Thanks - have done so.

9 years ago

Ok I got the ticket reviewed, and just to update should anyone be interested, I used the account Trade Debtors. Turns out when entering the brought forward balances, the system is asking for the other side of the double entry - ie income - and the Trade Debtors is updated in the background. So as a result the opening entry was debiting and crediting trade debtors, resulting in a zero balance.

I think this is a bit counter-intuitive as this is a feature is provided to update the trade debtor balance, so intuitively that's what I selected.

Best answer
9 years ago

Thanks, as you can tell I'm just ploughing into it and learning by doing (badly) rather than learning by careful reading of the literature.

9 years ago

As a side note for anybody else reading; I actually find it easier to re-create invoices/expenses in the usual fashion to set the opening trade debtor/creditor balances (and VAT), then journaling everything else in after.

9 years ago

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