The majority of opening balances can be added on the Settings > Opening balances menus, however, a journal can be used in conjunction with these menus to add other opening balances. Your start date in Clear Books is determined by your first reporting period which is setup when you first register a Clear Books account. You can adjust reporting periods on the Settings > Accounting > Periods menu.
Cash
The Settings > Opening balances > Cash menu can be used to enter an opening balance for your bank account. To adjust the amount just enter the correct figure in the Amount box and hit the Update button.
If you add any bank accounts in future you can update the opening balance of each account on this menu.
Debtors
On the Settings > Opening balances > Debtors menu, you can add in any sales invoices that are outstanding prior to your start date set in Clear Books. Fill in the required fields of the form. Use the plus icon highlighted blue in the Name field to add a new customer and click on the Create invoice button. You can also add new Projects or Accounts using the plus icon in blue beside each field if required.
Creditors
On the Settings > Opening balances > Creditors menu, you can add in any bills (purchase invoices) that are outstanding prior to your start date set in Clear Books. Fill in the required fields of the form. Use the blue plus icon in the Name field to add a new supplier and click on the Create invoice button.
Other Balances
The Settings > Opening balances > Other balances menu allows you to enter opening balances for balance sheet accounts. Enter debits as positive numbers and credits as negative numbers. The total debit (+ve) amount should be the same as the total Credit (-ve).
Journals
If you have a closing Trial balance taken from your previous accounting solution, you can create this as a journal within Clear Books.
Before adding the journal you would need to add in your opening cash balances, debtors and creditors as explained in the sections above. Once this is done you can now produce a Trial balance, in your Clear Books account on the Tools > Popular reports > Trial balance menu. Select the date range in the From and To boxes to be the reporting period prior to your first period in Clear Books. The last two columns on the report should show the debits and credits for this entire range. You can export this to CSV using the export option to the top right.
The next part is quite tricky and may require an accountant to help, however, you will have to adjust the figures on the closing Trial balance you took from your previous accounting solution to take into account the opening balances shown in the Clear Books Trial balance.
Once you have adjusted the closing Trial balance accordingly, you can add it as a journal on the Tools > Journals >All journals menu by hitting the Create journal button.
Fill in the details of the journal, make sure the date is before your start date in Clear Books. Select the number of lines and hit Update.
Next select the appropriate accounts (you can add new accounts on the Settings > Accounting > Codes menu) and add a debit or credit as appropriate.
