[Question] Opening Balances

[JPWilliams007]

We have completed our audit and need to bring in over the opening balances how would I do this? Do you just take the last financial years trial balance and debit and credit as per auditors final trial balance and is this done on the 1 March 2012?

You help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[JohnSilver]

Use the balance on the last day of February

[Dave A]

Which accounting software are you using?

[Christel]

Hi JP Williams, You should get the correct figures & gl account numbers from your auditors.
You would also need to make sure your opening balances for that specific year correspond to theirs. (i.e. was the GL accounts updated to AFS figures last year?).
Let's assume you need to update your records to 28 Feb 2011 AFS, then you would do as follow: Firstly make a backup;
If you need to update your opening balances (the auditors can give you a schedule) - if you current yearend is 28 Feb 2012 -you will do adjustments on 01 March 2010. If your current yearend is 28 Feb 2011, then adjustmens need to get done on 28 Feb 2010. If you have differences on the opening balances, then you need to speak to your auditors because that mean the data given to them was wrong.
To update to AFS: do journals on 28 Feb 2011 (for 2011 AFS).
At the end you would need to check that your Opening Capital and Shares/Memeber interest corresponds to what they have (pastel code 5200). This will indicate that jnl's was done correctly.

[Seanl]

HI
To further what Christel has rightly said, if this is a new system you are going onto, then you need to think about the subledgers too. Ensure that your Unpaid Customer Invoices balance back to the Debtors Control account in the balance sheet, the cash books balance back to the Balance sheet and so do the Vendors ... if you have stock, make sure your opening stock matches your phyiscal stock count before you post this in your balance sheet otherwise you will never have a starting point to reconcile back to.

Remember to create an opening balance account to post everything through, and this account MUST balance back to zero, otherwise if there are differences, as Christel said, you either need to speak to your auditors or there is something wrong with the Opening Balances Journal.

If it is a current system, make note of the above because you don't want to adjust your TB only, you need to take into account the subledgers.

Oh and do this in a test database first.... and ensure that once all is posted it all balances before doing this in your live system