Why this comes first
Unless you are starting a brand-new business on day one, your books did not begin empty. You already have money in the bank, customers who owe you, suppliers you owe, and equipment you own. Opening balances tell Kinxso Accounts what was true the moment before you started using it.
Skip this and your Balance Sheet will be wrong from the first day — it will show only what has happened since you started, which is not what your business is worth.
Pick your start date
Choose the first day of an accounting period: the start of a month, a quarter, or ideally your financial year. Everything before that date lives in your old system or your accountant's files; everything on or after it lives here.
What you need
From your previous system, your accountant, or your last set of accounts, as at the day before your start date:
- Bank and cash balances
- A list of unpaid customer invoices (who, how much, what date, what invoice number)
- A list of unpaid supplier bills
- Stock value
- Fixed assets and the depreciation taken on them so far
- Loans outstanding
- Tax owed or reclaimable
- The owners' capital and accumulated profit
Entering them
Go to Accounting → Opening Balances. Enter the closing balance for each account as at the day before your start date.
Opening balances must balance, exactly as any other entry must: total assets must equal liabilities plus equity. If they do not, something is missing from your list — most often accumulated profit, or an unpaid invoice nobody wrote down.
Unpaid invoices and bills
Do not enter only the Accounts Receivable total. Enter each outstanding invoice individually, as a real invoice dated before your start date. The same for unpaid supplier bills.
This takes longer, and it is worth it. It is what makes your AR Aging and AP Aging reports work, so you can see who owes you what and for how long, and it is what lets you match a payment to the right invoice when it arrives.
Check before you continue
Once entered, run the Trial Balance and the Balance Sheet:
- The Trial Balance should total the same on both sides.
- The Balance Sheet should balance, and the figures should match your previous accounts exactly.
If the two do not agree with where you came from, fix it now. Every transaction you post from here builds on these numbers, and a discrepancy only gets harder to find as the months pass.
Locking the past
When you are satisfied, close the periods before your start date (see Period close and year end). That stops anyone accidentally posting into a period your opening balances already account for, which would double-count it.