How do I enter an opening trial balance?
Summary
If you are a new customer to Platinum, or are using our accounts for the first time, you will need to journal an opening Trial Balance into Platinum.
More Information
The opening Trial Balance figures can be obtained from your existing accounts system or from your accountant.
Posting the Opening Trial Balance
The balances need to be entered onto the Nominal Ledger using Journal Entries.
- Set the "Entry mode" to 'Multiple'.
- Set "Reversing?" to 'No'.
- Enter the date at which the figures have been taken. Depending on how your system is set up, this will be the last day of the relevant month, or the first day of the following month.
- Enter each centre from the Trial Balance, ignoring Sales Control, Purchase Control and Profit to Date for now.
- Enter each value from the trial balance as an amount in the appropriate Debit(+) or Credit(-) column.
- Enter an suitable comment such as 'Op. Bal.'.
- Once all the values (apart from the ones listed above) are on, post the balance remaining to Z995 - Profit To Date. You should be left with just the figures for the Debtors and Creditors.
 | The Nett amount for the journal should always be 'Zero.' |
 | The values for Sales and Purchase Control should have been reached by posting the Opening Balances onto each individual Customer and Supplier Account through the Sales Ledger and Purchase Ledger. Therefore you should not post these balances to the Platinum control accounts; Z993 and Z994. If you are operating a Cash Accounting system you should instead post the balance to Z990. |
If you find any differences between the opening values for the Sales and Purchase Control centres and the opening balances you have posted onto the Sales Ledger and Purchase Ledger, try to identify where the differences are - for example, have you posted extra invoices after the opening trial balance was printed? Has the accountant written any debts off as bad debts? Have you paid off any invoices in the old system which were unpaid when the trial balance was printed? Make any corrections through the relevant customer or supplier accounts in the Sales Ledger or Purchase Ledger or contact your consultant if you are unsure how to proceed.
| DO NOT journal into or out of Z993/Z994 (Purchase/Sales Control) in order to correct these differences. These centres are for system postings ONLY. |
- Print a trial balance to check the figures against the list that you were using.
See also
- What do I do if my Trial Balance Doesn't Balance?
- What should I consider at month end?
- How to process a month end
