Starting balances exist only if you are transferring an existing business to Manager from another accounting system. In that case, you may need to set starting balances for customers who, on the day you begin using Manager, sometimes referred to as the start date:
- Have available credit unrelated to sales invoices, or
- Owe you money because of unpaid sales invoices.
General procedures for entering starting balances are found in another Guide. Read it first. Before you can enter starting balances for customers, the customers themselves must be created. Follow these procedures to enter them.
Enter available credit
Available credit refers to any amount you owe your customer on your start date. This credit could be the result of past credit notes, settlement of contract disputes, or promised refunds. If your customer has a credit balance that can be applied to future invoices, go to the Customers tab and click Edit beside the customer’s name.
Enter the Starting balance of the available credit:
Click Update.
Note
The available credit must be entered in the currency selected for the customer.
Enter unpaid sales invoices
You cannot enter the starting balance for unpaid invoices as a single figure. Manager requires you to enter specific unpaid invoices, fully completed. This is so Manager can generate accurate cash-basis reports. Even if you do not adopt cash-basis accounting, it is important to enter all unpaid sales invoices so you can issue detailed customer statements and enter eventual receipts against the correct invoices.
Enter a starting-balance invoice in the same manner as a regular sales invoice. See this Guide for sales invoice instructions. The Issue date field will, by default, be prefilled with the current date. Edit this to match the original issue date from your old accounting system.
Manager uses these pre-start sales invoices to establish starting balances in Accounts receivable. They will not affect profit and loss statements during the current or later financial periods. If an invoice has been partially paid on the day you begin using Manager, only its remaining balance due should be entered.
When finished, click Create to save the invoice. Repeat for all open sales invoices preceding your start date.
Note
Carefully consider inventory items on pre-start invoices. If items on a sales invoice were already delivered under the prior accounting system, add the quantities back to the starting balances for those inventory items, because the pre-start sales invoice tells Manager they are being delivered again.