Chapter 4

Recording Your Opening Balances

In This Chapter

arrow Choosing the right time to switch to Sage

arrow Getting your opening balances

arrow Recording your opening balances

arrow Checking for accuracy

In this chapter I explain how to transfer the individual account balances from your previous accounting system, whether it’s manual or computerised, into Sage 50 Accounts. Effectively, you’re taking the values that make up what your business is worth on the day you swap from your old system and start using Sage. You need to set up your nominal records before recording balances, so check out Chapter 3 if you haven’t done that yet.

Opening balances give you a true picture of your business’s assets and liabilities to use as a starting point. If you don’t enter your opening balances, you don’t have accurate information about who owes you money, how much money you owe or how much money you have in the bank. You won’t even be able to reconcile your bank balance. In short, without opening balances, the information in your Sage program isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on!

Entering your opening balances can ...

Get Sage 50 Accounts For Dummies® 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.