Creditors Opening Balances

For a new business setup (which has no money owing to vendors), creditors' balances will need to be brought across from the old accounting system to Jim2. The general ledger should already show the starting point total of the amount of money payable to creditors as a general ledger opening balance figure. How that figure is balanced is made by entering individual creditor opening balance purchases/invoices (money owed to vendors) and credits (money/credits owed to the business by a vendor). Entering these opening balance purchases/invoices/credits allows for reporting on and applying vendor payments correctly within Jim2.

These opening balance purchases/credits have not been created from any Jim2 workflow (purchase information, stock information, etc.). These entries are a one-off reconciliation between the old system and Jim2. Therefore, it is very important that any out of balance amounts between the carry-forward general ledger creditors balance (from the old software) and the creditors opening balance purchases/credits are clarified. Creditors opening balances don't necessarily need to be entered in order to begin using Jim2, however it is recommended that they are entered as soon as possible to make processing vendor payments more accurate.

Once entered, opening balance creditors are then aged correctly. Once a payment is applied to an opening balance creditor's purchase or credit, the original entry in the creditors opening balance list will change to a grey shaded background, and can no longer be edited or deleted.

At the bottom of the Creditors Opening Balance screen there are three dollar value fields.

Field	Explanation
Creditors	This is the general ledger creditors account opening balance.
Opening Balance	This is the calculated value from the entries in this list.
Out of Balance	This is the difference between the value entered into the general ledger creditors account as the opening balance and what has been entered here. This field should show 0.00 once all creditor opening balance entries are entered.

When updating a creditors opening balance (by way of payment in the Creditor screen), make sure that any changes are reflected in the general ledger creditors account opening balance value.

This is not updated automatically, so this value must be updated manually.

The creditors general ledger account will also display its own opening balance, the calculated opening balance and any out of balance amounts, to minimise errors when updating the opening balance in one place only.