brought forward open balance for retained earnings

Hi there, @aurora_metro. I have few insights into how to handle retained earnings in QuickBooks Online.

If you're creating a new company file, simply enter the balance sheet items, including income and expenses. Retained earnings are last year’s net income, so once you have transactions from last year entered into the QB, the retained earnings will have an entry.

All starting balances for balance sheet entries are automatically posted to the Opening Balance Equity (OBE) account. Then use a journal entry to transfer the OBE to the equity owner.

Additionally, you can enter an opening balance into your retained earnings account by creating a journal entry.

Here's how:

1. Select the (+) New icon.
2. Choose Journal Entry.
3. Arrange the date for the opening balance to match.
4. On the first line, from the Account column, select Retained Earnings.
5. Fill in the amount of the balance in the Credits column.
6. On the second line, select the account we're using to create the balance. 
7. Enter the amount in the Debits column.
8. Click Save and close.

Take note that when it comes to selecting an account, it would be best to reach out to your accountant. This is to ensure that your recordings are accurate. 

To learn more about retained earning, please refer to this resource: How to view Retained Earnings account details.

If there's anything else I can help you with, please let me know. I'd be happy to get back to you and provide additional assistance. Have a good day.

Hi there

I appreciate your attempt at solving my query 

I did mentioned we had a loss from previous years& previous accounting system  to carry forward.

The journal would therefore need to

Debit retained earning account

credit account used to create the balance ??

Therefore here are my issues

with a journal creation, we need a double entry, so although the first line of the 

journal is showing the loss under RE on the balance sheet correctly IE a - sign for negative,

when I am using the journal entry method...

The second line is the problem ....IE ending up under non current liabilities, surely we

would not create another equity account for the second entry?

Plus with regards to the Retained Earning account, unless I create a journal, there are no ways of adding an amount  (ideally an opening balance for RE b/fwd) on this account as I mentioned on my first query mail.

I just want to see one line on my balance sheet , with the carried forward balance showing on it.

Isn't it what all balance sheet look like across the board?

Why is it so difficult to achieve here

The understanding of RE or how to create a journal is not the issue here.

Let alone that we are 2021, and this is a query re opening balance back on the 01/04/2018, when we went live with quickbooks online 

Thanks for your help if you can

I did not see a reply to the last comments made by the user. I have exactly the same problem and need to fix this issue.

Thanks for joining this thread, lgeltman.
 

To view the details of a Retained Earnings account, you'll need to run your previous year's Profit and Loss statement. The reason you won't be able to find the information you're looking for on your Balance Sheets is because the Retained Earnings account is a rollover of all previous fiscal years' net profit (or loss), and QuickBooks automatically swaps funds from your net income or loss into the account and doesn't record any visible transactions for it.
 

I can certainly understand how an ability to view Retained Earnings account details on a one-line balance sheet with carried forward balances could be useful and have submitted a suggestion about it as of today.
 

You can also submit your own feature requests while signed in.
 

Here's how:

1. Use the Gear (⚙️) icon.
   
2. Click Feedback.
   
3. Enter your suggestions and/or comments.
4. Hit Next.
   
5. Choose Skip and send message.
6. The available drop-down menu can be used to pick an appropriate category.
7. Select Send message.
   

Your feedback's definitely valuable to Intuit. It will be reviewed by our Product Development team and considered in future updates. You can stay up-to-date with the latest news about your product by checking out Intuit's Product Updates webpage.
 

I've additionally included a detailed resource about viewing Retained Earnings account information which may come in handy moving forward: How to view Retained Earnings account detail
 

Please feel welcome to send a reply if there's any questions. Have a wonderful day!

I believe this is not the issue this person was referring to.  No one actually answered the question.

They are just trying to open quickbooks with a retained earning balance from prior years.  What is the account you would debit as all the transactions are not being brought forward.  No one is recreating all the transactions in quickbooks from prior years - they are just wanting to record the beginning Retained earnings figure from prior tax year that is needed to start using quickbooks for their company to carry forward into the coming years reports.

I am also following this, please reply to the question above asap!

I am also following this, please reply to the question above asap 

@RSM3 @jen-beblessedbookkeeping 

After you have made entries for the accounts balances, you should have a balance in opening equity.  You will move that from opening balance equity to the appropriate equity accounts, one of which is retained earnings.  To do that, create a journal entry: debit opening balance equity, credit retained earnings.

What is the tax treatment of retained earnings rolled over from opening balance equity.  I have an S-Corporation and use schedule K-1.  Where would I put the retained earnings on the form if I distributed RE to the shareholder?  It is not Ordinary Income (that would go in box 1 K-1).

Thank you so much. This makes sense now, I don't know why these type of transition topics are not well answered, and quickly accessed.  I still have more digging to do to figure everything out but this was very helpful.