Set a bank account's opening balance
An opening balance records what a bank account already held before you started keeping its books in Sales Scribe — so the account's ledger balance agrees with the real bank from day one. It is posted as a normal, auditable manual journal against a dedicated Opening Balances equity account.
Before you begin
- You need the manage chart of accounts permission.
- An opening balance describes the account before any activity — it can only be set while the account has no other ledger transactions. Record it first, then start posting.
- An account that starts at nil needs no opening balance. You can enter 0 (or leave the field blank, which means the same thing): nothing is posted, and the account is still free to take a real opening balance later if one turns up.
What the figure means, and what a minus sign means
The figure is read against the kind of account it belongs to — a credit card is not simply a bank account with the sign turned round:
| Account | Enter | A negative figure means |
|---|---|---|
| Bank or Cash | what was in the account | the account was overdrawn — you owed the bank. Enter -2000 for a current account £2,000 overdrawn. |
| Credit card | what you owed on the card | the card was in credit — the card company owed you. Enter -100 if you were £100 ahead. |
Both directions are ordinary; an overdraft is a perfectly normal thing to migrate across. Sales Scribe reads the sign, then posts the journal the right way round — the journal itself never carries a negative debit or credit.
Set it when you create the account
The easiest moment: the new bank account form has an optional Opening balance section. Enter the amount (with a minus sign if the account was overdrawn — see the table above) and the as at date; for a foreign-currency account an exchange rate field appears, prefilled with the latest stored rate for that date. The balance is validated before the account is created and posted immediately after.
Set it later from the account's page
- Go to Banking → Bank Accounts and open the account.
- Find the Opening balance card. If the account has no activity yet, it shows the entry form: enter the amount, the As at date (and the exchange rate for a foreign-currency account), then choose Post Opening Balance.
- The card now shows the posted balance with a link to its MJ- journal.
What it does in your books
A balanced manual journal — the bank's ledger account on one side, the Opening Balances equity account on the other — numbered MJ-, dated as at your chosen date, and voidable like any journal. For a foreign-currency account the amount stays in the account's own currency and converts to your functional currency at the rate you confirmed. Nothing touches your Profit & Loss or VAT.
Which way round it posts follows the figure you entered:
| You entered | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Bank/cash +1,200 (in funds) | Bank account 1,200 | Opening Balances 1,200 |
| Bank/cash −1,200 (overdrawn) | Opening Balances 1,200 | Bank account 1,200 |
| Credit card +1,200 (owed) | Opening Balances 1,200 | Card account 1,200 |
| Credit card −1,200 (in credit) | Card account 1,200 | Opening Balances 1,200 |
An overdrawn bank account therefore carries a credit balance on an asset account, and a card in credit a debit balance on a liability account. That is normal and correct in a ledger — it is what "negative cash" is. Presenting an overdraft under creditors on a statutory balance sheet is a reporting decision, made when the accounts are prepared, not something the opening balance should disguise.
Change or remove an opening balance
Open the linked journal and void it (the card links straight to it). Once the void has posted, the account has no live activity again and the entry form reappears, so you can post a corrected balance.
Troubleshooting
- "This account already has ledger activity" — an opening balance asserts the position before your records began, so it is refused once anything else has posted to the account. If the activity is a mistake, void it first; otherwise record the missing history as ordinary transactions instead.
- "A nil opening balance needs no journal" — you entered 0. That is accepted, not an error: there is nothing to bring forward, so no journal is written and the entry form stays on the page.
- The balance posted the wrong way round. Check the sign against the table above: on a credit card a positive figure is what you owed, so entering the card balance as a negative number records the card as being in credit. Void the journal and post it again.
- The account list shows my credit card as a negative number. The Bank Accounts list is a "how much cash do I have" view, so every account is shown cash-first: £300 owed on a card reads as −300.00 there, while the opening-balance card on the account itself says you owed 300.00. Both describe the same position.