Entering opening balances

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An opening balance (or starting balance) is the dollar value of an account when you started using MYOB Essentials, or at the beginning of a period (e.g. a new financial year).

If your accounts had balances before you began using MYOB Essentials, you need to assign those balances to your accounts before you can accurately track your business using MYOB Essentials.

Take a look at this quick overview of opening balances:

Need to change your opening balance date? See the FAQ below for how to change your opening balance date to include older transactions in your current balance.

You can find your account opening balances on a trial balance report, a balance sheet or a profit & loss report prepared immediately prior to when you began using MYOB Essentials. You can either ask an accounting advisor (such as your accountant) to prepare these reports, or find your account opening balances using your previous accounting software or paper-based records.

If you began using MYOB Essentials:

at the start of your financial year, enter the opening balances of your asset, liability and equity accounts only. The opening balances of your income, cost of sales and expense accounts should be zero.
at any other time during your financial year (for example, in September, when your financial year started in July), enter the opening balances of all your accounts.

To enter an opening balance

In MYOB Essentials, click your business name and choose Accounts list. The Accounts list page appears.
Click Edit accounts. The Edit accounts page appears.
In the accounts list, find the account you want to enter an opening balance for.
Enter the opening balance for this account in the Opening balance column.

Enter opening balances as positive numbers
Don’t, for example, enter your liability account balances as negative numbers. Enter negative amounts only if accounts truly have negative balances. As a rule, these will be asset accounts that record accumulated depreciation.
If you want, edit other aspects of the account including Account number or Account name.
Click Save to save your changes.

If you need to, you can change the opening balances you've entered, with the exception of locked accounts (those marked with a padlock ). For more information on editing your accounts list, see Adding, editing and deleting accounts.

FAQs

Can I change the opening balance date?

Yes, you can change the opening balance date, provided you don't have any transactions dated before the opening balance date you want to use. If you do, you'll need to delete these first. See Deleting transactions.

Click Edit accounts at the top of the Accounts list page.

Then click your current Opening Balances date to change it. See Adding, editing and deleting accounts for more details.

change opening balance date popup window