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This text refers to program version 4.3  

Introduction

Unless you are starting a new business and intend to use FirstOffice to administer your accounts from the first day, you will need to enter some opening balances. If you are starting to use FirstOffice at the beginning of the fiscal year, these opening balances will take the form of the closing balances for each Account for the end of the previous year. If you are starting to use FirstOffice in the middle of the fiscal year, there will be two components to opening balance figures: the closing balances for each Account for the end of the previous year and Account balances for the current year to date.

To carry out this task, you should equip yourself with as much information as you can in the form of transaction data and reports produced by the old system, in order to make this task as easy as possible.

We recommend that you change during a current financial year. You should enter Account balances for the previous year and then enter individually all current year transactions registered so far. This will a) make you familiar with FirstOffice, and b) automatically give you a check of the old transactions.

You should already have specified the current and, if appropriate, previous financial years using the Fiscal Years setting and entered the Chart of Accounts and VAT Codes you wish to use. Normally you will be able to use the Chart of Accounts included in the program. If this is not suitable, you can import your own chart from a text file or enter it manually. For more instructions about this process, please refer to the Setting up a Basic Accounts System page.

Once you have entered your Fiscal Year, Chart of Accounts and VAT Codes, it's a good idea to enter all the opening balances at once. Ideally, this process should be completed before you start to enter new Transactions, but it is possible to change the opening balances at any time during the financial year.

When entering opening balances, the level of detail is up to you. Factors influencing this decision may be the number of Transactions, the time available to enter these Transactions, whether they can be imported (otherwise, you will have to enter them manually) and the level of detail required in your reports. It might be that you enter or import all Transactions individually (in the form of Invoices, Receipts, Purchase Invoices, Payments and Nominal Ledger Transactions) or it might be that you enter a single opening balance for each Account. Full details covering the necessary data entry processes follow in the next sections.

Once you have entered your opening balances in their chosen form, print the reports you usually use and compare them with the reports from your old system. These reports should include the Trial Balance, Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet from the Nominal Ledger, and lists of Debtors and Creditors using the Sales and Purchase Ledger reports respectively.

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