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How to carry over account balances from a previous system to Bookem

When you're switching to Bookem, you might need to transfer account balances from your previous system for clients.

You can handle both positive and negative balances without affecting your income or tax calculations. Always make sure balances are transferred through payments and not by adjusting invoice line items. You'll have to set up a new payment method for this. We'll run you through the steps.

1. Create an opening balance payment method

You need to set up an payment method for opening balances to transfer client balances from your previous system accurately.

Follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings > Payments & Invoicing

  2. Navigate to Payment methods in the top bar

  3. Now, click '+ New Payment Method' to create an opening balance payment method

  4. In the drop-down, select 'Other' as a payment method and type 'Opening balance' as the payment method name

2. Create an opening balance for a client

After creating an opening balance payment method, you can now add opening balances to clients accounts.

Follow these steps:

1. Via the client's profile, navigate to the 'Account' tab

2. Click '+Create a payment'

3. Now, complete the 'Payment date', 'Received amount' fields, and then select the 'Opening Balance' payment method. You can also make a note if more information is required about this payment

Next, we'll show you how to handle both debit and credit amounts for opening balance accounts.

3. Allocate a credit or debit amount to an account

Credit: If a client paid a deposit to you, or has credit that rolled over from another account, you need to allocate a positive amount in the opening balance. You can then choose to allocate it to an outstanding invoice.

Debit: If the client owes you money, the opening balance amount should be negative. It's important to note that negative opening balances cannot be allocated to invoices but will rather be cancelled out by future payments.

Here's a video to show you how to do both:

4. Apply an opening balance payment to an outstanding invoice

Follow these steps:

1. Via the client profile, navigate to the payment via the 'Accounts' tab

2. Click on the opening balance payment that was previously made

3. Now, click the 'Add invoice' button and find the relevant invoice - select to apply it to the payment

Here's a video to show you how:

NOTE: If you make the opening balance payment occur at an earlier date to the statement period, eg 1st November, this will remove that line item from your statement, which starts from eg. 1st Dec

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