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Enter and manage opening balances in QuickBooks Online

by Intuit•30• Updated 2 days ago

When you first add a real-life bank or credit card account to QuickBooks, you enter the account balance on the day you started tracking it in QuickBooks. This helps keep your QuickBooks accounts a match for your bank records.

If you connect your bank and credit card accounts, we add up the transactions you’ve made since the date you picked and use them to get your opening balance. But if you don’t, you can do so manually.

Tip: QuickBooks tracks all of your opening balances for all of your accounts in an Opening Balance Equity account. This makes it easy to go back and look at what you entered later on.

Note: If you’ve already created an account without an opening balance and want to add one, you can add an opening balance later with a journal entry.

Enter an opening balance

If you connect your bank and credit card accounts, QuickBooks automatically downloads your historical transactions up to a certain date. It totals them up and enters the opening balance and date for you. If you don't plan to connect your account, you can manually enter the opening balance. Here’s how: 

Follow this link to complete the steps in product Open this link in a new window

  1. Select New account, then set up your account.
  2. In the Opening balance field, add the balance reflecting your bank or credit card account.
    Tip: Make sure you know the amount for your opening balance.
  3. Select the date you want to start tracking your finances in the As of field.
    Note: You can put a description in the Description field to add information about this account. 
  4. Select Save.
  • If this bank or credit card account is new, use the day you opened it at your bank.
  • If the bank or credit card account isn't new, use the beginning date for your next account statement.

If you need to change your opening balance to include older transactions, edit the start date and opening balance of your account.

  1. Follow this link to complete the steps in product .
  2. Locate the account and select Account history.
  3. Select the opening balance entry. This entry will be the earliest in the list and show Opening balance equity as the payee.
  4. Edit the date, then the amount. If needed, select Edit to make your changes. 
  5. Select Save.

Next steps

If you need to check what you entered later, find the Opening Balance Equity account in your Chart of accounts. Follow this link to complete the steps in product . The Opening Balance Equity account tracks the opening balance for all your QuickBooks accounts.

Related links

QuickBooks Online EssentialsQuickBooks Online PlusQuickBooks Online Simple Start

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