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userdonna1
February 2, 2021
Question

How do I enter opening balances in a journal entry when I have already set up bank, A/P and A/R entries? These entries leave my G/L out of balance.

  • February 2, 2021
  • 1 reply
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1 reply

C
CaitlinOG
February 2, 2021

Hi userdonna1,

 

Welcome to the Community! QuickBooks Online gives you flexibility by allowing you to enter your opening balances at any time. I can explain how to go about this.

 

QuickBooks Online allows you to enter your opening balances both at the time of creating your accounts as well as afterwards by using a journal entry. Here's how to enter your opening balances in a journal entry:

 

  • Navigate to the + New button and select Journal entry.
  • If anything has been posted to the account already, enter an opening balance date that comes before the oldest transaction in the account. 
  • Pick the account you want to enter the opening balance for in the first line from the Account dropdown menu.
  • On the second line from the Account dropdown, select Opening Balance Equity.
  • Use your bank statements to enter the balance of your real-life account on the date you picked as the opening balance date.
  • Enter the debits and credits based on the type of account you entered on the first line. (Note: You can find more details on how debits and credits work for different accounts in the link that I'll include below). 
  • When you're finished click Save.


Once you have the journal entry created, you'll manually reconcile the transaction so that it doesn't show up in future account reconciliations. You can find the steps to do this as well as more information about debits and credits in the following Community article: What to do if you didn't enter an opening balance in QuickBooks Online

 

If there's anything else I can do to help please let me know!

C
Christine2022
May 10, 2022

I do not see the opening balance equity account in my chart of accounts,  and if i try to create it, it says i cannot have another opening balance.

How do i find it?

A
Alex M
May 11, 2022

Hi there Christine2022,

 

It;'s vital that all your accounts be set up properly so that your books can be balanced. QuickBooks Online is a great tool able to help you keep track of transactions in your books by allowing you to personalize your chart of accounts to fit the needs of your business. I can provide some information about the Opening Balance Equity account.

 

One possible cause for you not finding the account would be that you might've renamed that account. You can find it even though a name could've been changed by finding an account that has the Equity type as well as the Opening Balance Equity detail type. Only one account can have this detail type, and this would be your opening balance account. Another possible cause you can't see it would be if you have a certain amount of accounts, these can be displayed on more than one page in your chart of accounts. In order to see if you have a second page, scroll down to the bottom of the list of accounts, and you'll see a number of accounts shown out of a total. If the total is the same as the amounts shown, you only have one page. If the total and the accounts shown have a different number, there should be an option to view the next page in the bottom right corner.

 

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out here.

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