Opening balance AP invoices or bills allow you to record accounts payable from previous accounting periods as part of your initial accounting setup.
Although you can add all your accounts payable opening balances in a journal entry, by creating opening balance bills you can track and settle these accounts payable without having to manually add journal entries each time you make a payment for these opening balances.
Creating opening balance bills
To create an opening balance bill,
Create an opening balance bill
- In the main menu, go to Purchases, then click on Expenses / Purchases.
- Click the (+) Button and then click on Opening Balance.
- Choose the Vendor, Currency, Issued and Expiration dates, Status, and the Employee.
- The Content tab has 2 sub-tabs, Items and Ledger Accounts.
[4] Items and Ledger Accounts Sub-Tabs
The Items tab holds the list of products or service items for this document. We use the Items Tab to record purchases of items or services we’ve previously added.
You can learn more about adding products and services by reading the Managing Products and Services how-to article.
The Ledger Accounts tab holds the list of purchase or expense items posted to ledger accounts.
You can add new ledger accounts by going to Accounting / Chart of Accounts
Bill Items (Items Tab)
- Click on the Content tab and then on the Items Sub-Tab,
- Choose the Product or Service, Tax rate, Quantity, Price, and Tax amount on each item.
- To add new items, click on the (+ ITEM) Button below the list and Repeat Step 2.
- If you need to remove an item, click on the trash can icon on the right of each item.
Keep in mind that opening balance bills create an account payable, however, they do not affect inventory count and are classified as opening balance journal entries in the general journal.
Once we complete the document, click on Save.
You can repeat this step for all pending opening balance bills.
