Hey christine26,
Setting up your chart of accounts at the start of your bookkeeping is the best way to ensure everything will be recorded accurately as you go. The opening balance is a crucial part of keeping things consistent, and serves as a starting point for accounts you intend to reconcile. To help you maintain accurate records, the beginning balance field can only be used when first creating the account. This creates an entry in your books, which we can easily modify at any time. I'll be happy to guide you through this.
The beginning balance field you see during account creation is a quick and convenient way to record an amount. This is automatically marked as reconciled to ensure you start at the right place. You can edit this in just a few simple steps:
- Select the Accounting menu, then select Chart of Accounts.
- Find the account on the list and select Account history.
- Search for the opening balance entry. These typically include “Opening Balance Equity” in the Payee Account column and “Opening Balance” in the Memo column.
- Click on this to edit the amount, then click Save.
With this, you should be all set to change the amounts for accounts created with a balance. If you created an account without a balance, check out this great article for info on manually recording this entry: What to do if you didn't enter an opening balance in QuickBooks Online
Let me know how this goes! I want to make sure your books start off on the right foot.
