How to Enter the Correct Opening Balance for your Bank Account

Overview

When you link your bank account in Easy Cashflow you will be prompted to enter the account balance as of the date you wish to import transactions from. You may wish to set this to be the start of the Financial Year, although this is not mandatory.

It's important that the figure you enter for the balance on that date is correct, because it ensures the reconciliation process is accurate (reconciliation is where you check that everything in your bank account has been accounted for in Easy Cashflow).

How to Find the Balance

The process differs from bank to bank, but what you are looking for is to get a bank statement that spans the date you are importing transactions from.

If we assume you are importing from the start of a financial year, then you are looking for the balance on July 1st of the current FY. Some banks will specifically show the Opening Balance as its own line item when you retrieve a statement from that day:

Or the statement itself (if you start from 01/07) may show the Opening Balance at the top:

Or you may have to find the balance as at 01/07 from the transactions — in this example the closing balance on 28/06 is the one to use, because the next transaction after that is on 04/07:

Adding it Later

If you don't have the opening balance to-hand when linking your bank account, no problem. Just enter zero in the field — you can ask your advisor to create an opening balance journal later to add it.