Hey there, @CaitlinAriadne.
Thank you for sharing your concerns with us here in the Community. I appreciate all the details you've included.
First I wanted say awesome job for researching and using our help articles. That's a great start with any troubleshooting for QuickBooks.
In QuickBooks Online, when there hasn't been an opening balance created for an account, you'll need to create a Journal Entry. However, please know you can only create a Journal Entry if you haven't reconciled the account yet.
If you've reconciled it, or if you have questions, reach out to your accountant. This can get tricky and they know how to handle the next steps. Don't have an accountant? Don't sweat. We can help you find one.
For additional details about this process, kindly check out our help article for creating opening balances I've included below.
Now that your opening balance is fixed, you can begin with your reconcile.
If these are the same help articles that you've checked out before, I wanted to clarify if you're using QuickBooks Online or possibly QuickBooks Desktop? These are different programs, so the steps listed for one won't work for the other.
Just incase you're using QuickBooks Desktop, I've gone ahead and included our help articles for this process below.
Please let me know in the comments below if you have any additional questions or concerns. I'm always around to lend a hand. Take care!
