Entering Your Beginning Balances
Background
As a new Accounting customer, you have the option to enter your current trial balance, along with any outstanding customer invoices owed to you, and outstanding bills you owe to your vendors. This will create the journal entries needed to balance when you receive payment or pay money to others.
First, you will choose your initial account settings. See Getting Started with Patriot Accounting. Then you have the option to import or enter your beginning balances.
How to Enter Your Beginning Balances
After you have completed your initial accounting settings, you will be asked if you want to enter your beginning balances. If you answer “Yes,” you will need to gather the following items to enter:
- Your current trial balance sheet
- A spreadsheet of your customers, if you want to import them from your previous software
- All outstanding customer invoices that are owed to you
- A spreadsheet of your vendors, if you want to import them from your previous software
- All outstanding vendor bills that you owe
Step 1: Enter your beginning balances
- Select your beginning balances date. We recommend you use the last day of your previous reporting period.
- You will need to enter all of the appropriate debits and credits that appear on your most recent trial balance. You either enter this manually, or you can import your previous provider’s trial balance report or your own CSV. For more info please check out our help article, How to Import Trial Balances.
- If you have outstanding customer invoices, the total amount of your Accounts Receivable will need to match the total of all outstanding customer invoices owed.
- If you have outstanding vendor bills, the total amount of your Accounts Payable will need to match the total of all outstanding vendor bills you owe.
- Your debits and credits must match before you can continue.
Step 2: Import/Enter Your Customers
- You can either import a spreadsheet of your customers, or can manually enter each customer. For more details, see Importing Customers into Patriot Software.
- If you don’t have any customer or outstanding customer invoices, skip to Step 5.
Step 3: Enter Your Outstanding Customer Invoices
- You will need to add each outstanding customer invoice, one at a time. Remember, the total of all of your outstanding customer invoices will need to match the total Accounts Receivable balance you entered in Step 1.
Step 4: Review Products and Services
- For any products and services that you entered for your customer invoices, you can save these so they’ll be available to use in future invoices. You can also add, edit, or delete your products and services later.
Step 5: Import/Enter Your Vendors
- Similar to your customers, you can either import a spreadsheet of your vendors, or manually enter each one. For more details, see Importing Vendors into Patriot Software.
- If you don’t have any vendors or outstanding vendor bills, skip to Step 7.
Step 6: Enter Your Outstanding Vendor Bills
- You will need to add each outstanding vendor bill that you owe, one at a time. Remember, the total of all your outstanding vendor bills will need to match the total Accounts Payable balance you entered in Step 1.
Step 7: Review and Make Adjustments
- After you have entered both customer invoices and vendor bills, Patriot will run a check to make sure your totals match.
- If they do not match, you can either go back to Step 1 and correct your beginning balance, or edit/add your customer invoices or vendor bills. You will need to make sure your totals match before you continue.
- Once your totals match, you will see a preview of your journal entries. Click “Continue” to finish the wizard and go to your Accounting Home page.
- You can now view the following activity:
- View your journal entries under Reports > Accounting > Financial Reports > General Ledger.
- View your account balances under Reports > Accounting > Financial Reports > Account Trial Balances Report.
- View your entered customer invoices under Reports > Accounting > Customer Reports > Invoice Listing.
- View your entered vendor bills under Reports > Accounting > Vendor Reports > Bills.
If you find you have made a mistake on your beginning balances and need to correct it, please read How to Edit, Void, Delete Beginning Balances.
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