Opening Balance Sheet Items

ERPNext Accounting
1

I have a question and hoping someone smarter than me can help me out here! :slight_smile:

We ended our fiscal year June 30. We began using ERPNext while our accountant was finishing up our end of year statements. We imported all of the AP and AR transactions into ERPNext as opening invoices.

Now, the dilemma I am finding isā€¦ We now have our balance sheet from our accountant and need to input the numbers accordingly. However, the balance sheet is in balance because the AR and AP are included, of course. But I shouldnā€™t put the AR and AP amounts in as opening balances because we already did that with our import. What do I do? I entered all the other info but I canā€™t save because debits and credits donā€™t equal. Itā€™s a bit of a bind and I really need to get this data entered so we can run some reports for July.

Help!

thanks!
Heather

2

Hi Heather!

Have you gone through the following link?
https://erpnext.org/docs/user/manual/en/accounts/opening-accounts

I am quoting the relevant paragraph below:

For all assets (excluding Accounts Receivables): This entry will contain all your assets except the amounts you are expecting from your Customers against outstanding Sales Invoices. You will have to update your receivables by making an individual entry for each Invoice (this is because, the system will help you track the invoices which are yet to be paid). You can credit the sum of all these debits against the Temporary Opening account.

For all liabilities: Similarly you need to pass a Journal Entry for your Opening Liabilities (except for the bills you have to pay) against Temporary Opening account.

So, IMO, Temporary Opening account is what you need.

Let us know if there is still anything you need help with :slight_smile:

Shubham

3

Thanks for the assistance. Iā€™ve actually read that article several times but the issue is that the opening invoices for AP and AR have already been entered so if I put those values in the temporary accounts, then what? That number will stay there forever? I mean, weā€™ve already paid all of our open AP and received almost 95% of the open AR from our opening balances.

I just donā€™t understand how to get my opening entry journals in balance so I can save itā€¦ since my AR/AP is already entered? Confused!

4

While creating those opening invoices for AP (Purchase) & AR (Sales), which you probably did through the Opening Invoice Creation Tool. So, there, you must have selected the temporary opening account as ā€˜Temporary Openingā€™ and that would have already affected your balances in the Temporary Opening account in your chart of accounts. So, to give a quick example, say you had AR of $1000 and AP of $100, so your Temporary Opening will have a debit balance of $900.

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Now, when you enter rest of the balance sheets items which are balanced when considering AR and AP as well, there, you will credit the balance amount i.e. $900 for example, to the Temporary Opening account leading it to being perfectly balanced again.

As for having already paid APā€™s or received 95% AR, that should not matter because on the date of posting these invoices (I think July 1 in your case), they were unpaid. I am sure, the balance sheet items would also be posted on July 1 as well.

Hope this makes things little more clear.

2 Likes
5

Thanks again for your help here @Shubham_Gupta! I think that does make sense finally to me! So, whatever the difference was between my AP and AR, I should enter to temporary opening to make it balance.

What happens to this temporary opening in time? Does it go away or how does this impact our balance sheet going forward? Just curious as I was scared to do anything!

6

I am willing to pay someone for an hour of their time to get me through this painful balance sheet opening process. I have all of the information and even have a test environment I can use. Iā€™d like to do a screen share and talk through it. Tomorrow morning first thing would be idealā€¦ any takers that have accounting knowledge? :slight_smile:

7

Hi,

Iā€™d be willing to help. And just so that you know, I am not a service provider but just another user like you, so not need to pay anything. If you wish to seek ā€œprofessionalā€ help, you could always post a freelance job on https://erpnext.org/erpnext-jobs :slight_smile:

About the timing, its always better to mention timing along with a timezone since ERPNext is being used/developed by a global community. You can drop me a DM here on the forum whenever you are available and hopefully Iā€™d be available to respond (if its not night time here in India :stuck_out_tongue: ).

Thanks,
Shubham

8

Do you still need help about Acc? I will help you if i canā€¦

About your opening and temporary opening COA, lts make it simpleā€¦

  1. Make sure you have right and equal real balance sheet data that you will make it as Opening Balance in ERP Next.
  2. What ever you post in Debit make Temporary Opening COA in Credit and do the same for all credit post you make Temporary Opening COA in Debit.
  3. If you have right Balance sheet, the Temporary Opening COA will be zero it self, if still any numbers there its mean you still miss some account to post or may be you miss about the numbers.

I hope it will help you

May be better you can post your problems here, so it can be study case for othersā€¦

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