Opening Balances

Overview

When you move to Zoho ERP from other accounting software or from manually maintained book of records, you need to bring in your existing financial data. This includes your customer and vendor balances, bank and credit card balances, inventory stock details, income and expenses, and journal entries.

You can do this by entering your opening balances. It ensures that your business starts from the right financial position in Zoho ERP.

Understanding Opening Balances

Opening Balances represent the values of your accounts at the start you start using Zoho ERP.

If you switch to Zoho ERP at the end of a financial year, enter the closing balances from the previous year as the opening balance for the new year in Zoho ERP.

If you switch during a financial year, generate a Trial Balance report from your previous accounting software as of the migration date. Use the debit and credit balances from this report as your opening balances in Zoho ERP. If you’ve manually maintained records, enter the balances as of the migration date.

Points To Note Before Entering Your Balances

Before you enter all your balances in Zoho ERP, ensure that you complete the following to maintain accurate records:

• Add all your bank and credit card accounts so that you can enter balances tracked in those accounts as well.
• Add all items, along with their stock details. You can choose to import items in bulk, and enable inventory tracking if required.
• Generate a Trial Balance report as of the migration date to ensure that you’ve entered all the balances.

Migration Date

It is the date from which from which you start using this date. The transactions and records before this date remain in your previous accounting software or in your manual records. The transactions after this date must be recorded only in Zoho ERP. These balances reflect your business’s financial position just before you begin to use Zoho ERP.

Enter Opening Balances

Zoho ERP includes a list of default accounts that businesses commonly use. These accounts are grouped under categories such as:

• Accounts Receivable
• Accounts Payable
• Asset
• Expense
• Bank
• Liability
• Equity
• Income

Each category includes multiple accounts. If you don’t find an account that you usually use to track amounts, you can create a new one under the respective category.

To enter the opening balances for your organisation:

• Go to Settings.
• Under Organisation Settings, select Opening Balances under Setup & Configurations.
• In the next page, enter opening balances for your accounts. It differs when you enter opening balances for Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable categories and other categories.

Enter Opening Balances for Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable Accounts

Accounts Receivable tracks the amount your customers owe you, and Accounts Payable tracks the amount you owe your vendors, in your previous accounting software. You can add the opening balance for these accounts in one of the following ways:

• Import opening balances of customers and vendors
• Import customers and vendors along with their opening balances
• Enter opening balances for customers and vendors manually

Import Opening Balances of Customers and Vendors

If you’ve already added customers and vendors, you can import only their opening balances. To do so:

• Go to Settings.
• Under Organisation Settings, select Opening Balances under Setup & Configurations.
• In the next page, click Import next to Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable to import your customers’ or vendors’ opening balances respectively.
• In the next page, click Choose File and upload the required file. You can also download a sample file for your reference.
• Check if the Character Encoding and Field Delimiter matches your import file.
• Click Next.
• In the Map Fields page, check if the fields in import file and matched with the fields available in Zoho ERP. In this case, ensure if the Opening Balance field is mapped correctly.
• Check the Save these selections for use during future imports option if you want to use the same mapping next time.
• Click Next.
• In the Preview page, click Import.

The opening balances for your customers and vendors will be imported.

Import Opening Balances Along With Their Opening Balances

This is the preferred way to enter opening balances for your customers and vendors in Zoho ERP. While you import customers or vendors, include their opening balances in the import file, and map them with the Opening Balance field available in Zoho ERP.

Enter Opening Balances Manually

Enter the opening balance for your customers and vendors when you create or edit them in Zoho ERP.

Enter Opening Balances For Other Accounts

For other categories like Asset, Liability, and more, you can enter the opening balance for the respective accounts manually in the Opening Balances page under Settings. Here’s how:

• Go to Settings.
• Under Organisation Settings, select Opening Balances under Setup & Configurations.
• In the next page, click the respective category and enter the opening balances.

Create New Accounts

In case your business tracks amounts using a different account that is not available in Zoho ERP, you can add it as a new account in your organisation. To do so:

• Go to Settings.
• Under Organisation Settings, select Opening Balances under Setup & Configurations.
• In the next page, click on the required module, and select + New Account from the drill-down.
• In the Create Account pop-up, fill in the following fields:
  • Account Type: Select the type of account you want to add. The available options are Asset, Liability, Equity, Income, and Expense.
  • Account Name: Enter the name for the account.
  • Account Code: Enter a unique code for your item, for internal use.
  • Description: Provide a short description on why you’re creating this account.
  • Add to the watchlist on my dashboard: Choose this option to closely monitor this account by displaying it in your dashboard.
• Click Save.

The account will be created. You can now enter the respective opening balance in that account.