Opening balance help

IpreDictDeatH

I was just wondering if anybody can clarify the process of doing an opening balance for a brand new company for me. We are a retail business and have been trading since the start of this month. We have invested a small sum into the bank account, don't own any property or vehicles and we pay all of our invoices upfront. There is no prior financial history.

All of the info i've read in relation to opening balances says i need to do a trial balance and it discusses invoices that are outstanding (none of ours are).

So am i correct in thinking our opening balance should be fairly handy? Im just a bit confused as to the back dating of records. Am i right in thinking i have to set the opening balance to be what the bank account was at the time of opening (before trading)? And then do i just register the purchase and payment of supplies that have taken place in our first month? Also, with cash till and card terminal reciepts, do i have to also record what we took each day up until now? I will also in the future record any bank lodgements etc...do the ones i have already done this month haveto e recorded seperately as well?

Apologies if i come across ignorant, just trying to get my head around it all.

Cookie_Monster

Should be something like this at a very basic level:

Opening Trial Balance

Assets
Bank 1,000 (or whatever it was)
Stock 0
Debtors 0

Total 1,000

Liabilities and Capital

Creditors 0
Capital invested 1,000

Total 1,000

The Drunk Accountant

Id have to agree with cookie monsters assesment there

smeharg

Your opening trial balance will be nil, ie before ANY transactions take place.

If this is a company you will also need to recored share capital.

The easiest thing for you to do would be to have a look at an accounts package. There are plenty of online versions that offer free trials and Wave Accounts is free. You can concentrate on entering sales/purchases/lodgements/payments etc and let the back end look after itself.

Failing that find a bookkeeper.

IpreDictDeatH

Thanks folks,

Thats all a huge help!

I'll give it a go.

IpreDictDeatH

Hey just want to say cheers for the help. Im flying along now. Had a good read of the help files too so im getting the hang of it all.

I've set my opening balance date to be the day before i opened, but i obviously purchased stuff for the business before that. Will it be ok to enter a date for a purchase if it is before my opening balance date which i entered?

jjjd

IpreDictDeatH wrote: »

Hey just want to say cheers for the help. Im flying along now. Had a good read of the help files too so im getting the hang of it all.

I've set my opening balance date to be the day before i opened, but i obviously purchased stuff for the business before that. Will it be ok to enter a date for a purchase if it is before my opening balance date which i entered?

Just use opening balance date for prior purchases.