Starting balances
Georgiw
Member Posts: 3
Hello, I have input all transactions for three accounts over the last three months however, cannot work out how to enter the starting balance so that it shows within the reports produced. Please would you help?
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see if this article helps
https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/208622796
Many thanks for this information. I have already followed the advice which is very clear but it hasn't helped on this occasion.
Hi @Georgiw! What reports are you looking at that don't show your starting balances? They should appear under Owner's Equity if you've categorized them as such. I'd also recommend making sure you're looking at the Detailed report view as opposed to the summary
Is it possible to speak or write to you in a private message about this? I have emailed you several times already but haven't received any response.
Hey @Georgiw, it's not possible to send private messages in the Wave Community, but with a little more information we should be able to get to the bottom of what's going on here.
When you enter a starting balance for a bank account, the balance should be reflected in your Balance Sheet, Account Transactions Report, and any other reports that show your bank as a line item. If it is not reflected, then it could be a question of adjusting the dates on the report so that it is reflected.
If the report dates are correct, and you still can't see the transactions you've added reflected, could you post a screenshot of the transactions and the report where they are not reflected here?
Hi,
Talking of starting balances. My expenses have a starting balance. There shouldn't a starting balance for expenses. They're expenses from last year so they can not impact the profit/loss of this year. However, the starting balance results in my profit being more than it should be.
Can someone help me with that?
Thank you!
Ariane
Hey @Ariane and thanks for joining the Wave Community Forum! Within Wave, your bookkeeping does not close after a year is complete. What this means is that your expenses will have a starting balance for every month (including the beginning of a new financial year) because it takes the ending balance of the previous month for the account and then assumes it as the starting balance for the next. In saying this, you're not alone in needing your Profit and Loss to not carry the expenses over. For this reason, the Profit and Loss reports are customizable to a given date range. If that is not helpful, then the next best thing would be to create a new business in Wave for each financial year. This will allow you to enter the starting balances necessary for that new year's worth of books and then leave your expenses without a starting balance to start fresh if you should wish to do that.
In saying that, as part of the Wave Support Team, we can speak to the operational steps to do this in Wave, but I would urge you to speak to your Accounting Professional to ensure that this will not effect your accounting in any additional way!
I could be having the same issue as @Georgiw. I have entered starting balances as instructed, however when viewing the Account Transactions Report the starting balance isn't reflected at the top of the report but as the first transaction in the account, which causes the Balance Change at the bottom of the report is incorrect. (Screenshot of the starting balance(s) at top of Account Transactions report: https://us.v-cdn.net/6030557/uploads/editor/zq/cy7n5v2itchu.png "") It is doing the same thing for each of the accounts I've created.
This leads me to believe the numbers in the Balance Sheet are likely off as well, as a result of this?
Hey @em5481 , to solve this issue, you can have your starting filter date as 1 day after the date that you have your Starting Balance for. This will correctly show your starting balance in the report as well as remove the transaction itself from the balance change.
As an alternative, you could also move this starting balance to a day previous but then it may not be correct in regards to your statement which can get confusing.
Was there ever a serious answer to this? I am running income statements today on a client's accounts using custom dates to reflect the fiscal year. The end of fiscal year is correctly set in settings. Yet, when I click on the expense, it has a balance at the start of the fiscal year. How can this be?
Hey @GeneC
As @JordanD mentioned previously Wave does not close out a fiscal year.
Other accounting platforms don't allow you to touch historical data, but in Wave, you can pull up reports and make adjustments at any time. This means that your previous years never really "close". All that happens at year-end is that current year earnings get zeroed and added to previous year earnings.
At the start of your new fiscal year, you will see your new previous year earnings balance, fresh income and expense account balances, and your usual bank account balances.
What Wave doesn't do is put those amounts under a common account, such as retained earnings, that you can post transactions to. If you want your previous year income/loss to roll forward into retained earnings, you will need to manually do this. Here's how:
This could get confusing, so if you are concerned about your year-end balances and need some professional accounting help, you might want to get in touch with a professional accountant, which we always recommend
You really didn't address my specific concern. I've seen this fairly stock answer elsewhere on your site. Sorry to say, this is a major design flaw in your app. One shouldn't have to use a workaround. And by the way QB certainly allows you to change historical data - even though one shouldn't.
Hey @GeneC , correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't your specific concern about how to close out a fiscal year? If so, Barsin's response above that Wave does not do this should answer your question it for you.
If this wasn't your question and you'd like to be more specific, we'd be more than happy to answer that as well!
Hi @Georgiw
Kindly share your screenshot where the issue is. More than happy to help.
For your opening balances or conversion date, your fiscal year settings in wave must be setup correctly. For e.g here in Australia the norm fiscal year is June 30th.
Next if your conversion date/month is July 2020, then you will be working with the closing balances as at 30th June 2020 which technically this is the opening balances for July 2020 moving forward.
In other words, you will be entering transactions in wave from July 1st 2020 onwards....Your financial reports will show zero figures from 1st July 2020 onwards unless you have started entering transactions on or after this date.
You need a trial balance dated 30th June 2020 as this will be your figures or opening balances that will be recorded using journal transactions and dated 30th June, 2020.
Hope this helps
Regards
Karl
I followed the advice of AlexL who posted on 29 June 2020.
With Fiscal Year April 1 to March 31, I chose to enter the startup amount from the bank account as a Transaction dated Apr 1 (attributed to [the Society's] Equity).
All other bank transactions were dated Apr 2 or later.
Then, when I called for the Bank Account report, I set the filter for the start of the report period at April 2. The April 1 posting appeared perfectly as the Starting Balance, and all other transactions appeared as normal bank transactions in the report. Perfect for me.