Trouble with changing opening balance

Lukes_mum · ‎July 26, 2020

Sigh. i am trying to reconcile a bank account in a new QB file, but the person who set up the file for me did not enter an opening balance. If i edit the account, I have the option of changing the opening balance, which seems odd.

I followed what i thought were the correct instructions to change the balance (entering it in the account register) assigning the balance to the Opening Equity account. It posts as a transfer, not a deposit, and i think this is the reason that the balance still shows as zero.

Could someone please help me correct this? Thank you

LauraAB · ‎July 27, 2020

Welcome back, Lukes_mum,

I know when it comes to reconciling that the numbers require the utmost accuracy. Entering a missed opening balance is the perfect way to ensure that you're good to move forward with the task, and I'd be happy to guide you on how to resolve this situation in your new QuickBooks Desktop company file.

I'll start with the option you're seeing on the Edit Account window to Change Opening Balance. When you click that button, it simply takes you to the entry in the account register where you can make the changes as needed. When you've already entered an opening balance in, changing it would result in warnings about how it will affect reconciled transactions and the process as a whole.

What you've got with entering the transaction directly into the account register is the right idea, but in this case, the steps are going to be a bit different to register the opening balance. To start, delete the transaction you created and then follow the Recreate the opening balance section of the following article: Fix beginning balance issues in QuickBooks Desktop

Once you've done that, you should be good to go with reconciling the account. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes. I'm here to help!

View solution in original post

LauraAB · ‎July 27, 2020

Welcome back, Lukes_mum,

I know when it comes to reconciling that the numbers require the utmost accuracy. Entering a missed opening balance is the perfect way to ensure that you're good to move forward with the task, and I'd be happy to guide you on how to resolve this situation in your new QuickBooks Desktop company file.

I'll start with the option you're seeing on the Edit Account window to Change Opening Balance. When you click that button, it simply takes you to the entry in the account register where you can make the changes as needed. When you've already entered an opening balance in, changing it would result in warnings about how it will affect reconciled transactions and the process as a whole.

What you've got with entering the transaction directly into the account register is the right idea, but in this case, the steps are going to be a bit different to register the opening balance. To start, delete the transaction you created and then follow the Recreate the opening balance section of the following article: Fix beginning balance issues in QuickBooks Desktop

Once you've done that, you should be good to go with reconciling the account. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes. I'm here to help!

Lukes_mum · ‎July 27, 2020

Fixed! Thanks. I'd like to understand what I've done, and why the account thought i had an opening balance - was that because the account had entries?

LauraAB · ‎July 27, 2020

Sure, I can go over this. I like to have a sense of these kinds of things, too, so I know it can be useful knowledge to have. Initially the account was reading as a zero for the opening balance because one wasn't entered during setup. Even if you hadn't entered transactions into the account, entering an opening balance after setup would have taken the same steps in order for it to register properly in the program.

When an opening balance is set up during the account creation, the program takes these steps for you in the background by creating and then reconciling the transaction. Since it was missed, it simply meant doing it manually through the steps in the article. Let me know if that makes sense or if there's a part I didn't touch on that you're curious about.

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Trouble with changing opening balance