starting/opening balance for customer
nofbak
Member Posts: 3
Hi Wave Team,
How to key-in starting/opening balance for customer? My company just started using wave on Oct 2017 so i need to put in all the starting balance & the most critical part was the receivable/customer part.
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Hi @nofbak.
The easiest way to do it so that it would also be reflected under Customer Statements would be to create an invoice for it. You could create an invoice and not send it to the client, just keep it for your record, with an item you could call "Starting balance". You could also add more details in the item description field.
The most accurate way to do it would be to recreate all your standing invoices within Wave.
@Alexia
If i create an invoice for my starting balance, its will effect my current period income.
I've tried and yes, my current income increase of that starting balance. means its double recorded income.
@Alexia
attached here the screenshot of the accounts :
1) customer ledger
2) sales ledger
its shown that the starting balance that i've create through invoice, effect my current period sales
@nofbak, Wave works with accrual accounting, which means that an income transaction is created the second you create your invoice, not when it's paid. If you need that income to show up at a different date, you can change the date of the invoice.
Hello Wave Team,
Creating an Invoice and not sharing it with the client wont work, I adding an income entry as mentioned in another community thread but the starting balance is still 0. Adjusting the opening balance of any customer account is key here unless you start fresh on WaveApps which isn't the case for me and others as I see. I would want to adjust the opening balance for only this client.
Any new updates allowing us to do that?
Thank you for your support.
I'd like clarification for this also. My predecessor used spreadsheets to record outstanding customer balances. I am migrating our accounting record to Wave Accounting. I am also trying to record all those customer balances for previous months. I am starting at the new fiscal year. It would be wrong to record balances as a new invoice because it would throw off my current year income.
Hi @Salhidiq and @JayDev758.
The only way to affect customer balance in Wave is through invoices. As such, to make sure your customer balance reflects reality, you'll have to recreate these outstanding invoices in Wave.
If you have outstanding invoices spanning over more than one financial year, then you are right, @JayDev758, this shorthand of creating one larger invoice to use instead won't work. You'll have to enter those outstanding invoices in Wave manually. You'll be able to set the dates for invoices from last year accurately so that it reflects your actual income.
Hi, thank you but that’s not a solution. Could be for someone starting new with a handful of clients and invoices. If I have a few years and many clients were th multiple invoices per client per Year, then why you propose is not realistic.
When I create a statement for a client, I can see Starting balance is 0, I need to change that.
I can modify the starting balance to be the aggregated sum of all old invoices of the client.
I can’t also create 1 invoice as that messes up the invoice numbering as it’s a legal requirement to have them in series and any issued invoice you are recommending be done won’t be legal on our end or usable as we won’t be able to reference it in our audits.
Hi, @Salhidiq.
You would only have to enter the invoices that haven't been paid yet. There's no way to enter the total balance that was already paid off for a given customer in Wave without recreating all of your invoices. Do you have unpaid invoices spanning a few years? If so, they would have to be entered in Wave to accurately keep track of that balance.
Thanks Alexia, for sure there aren’t many but if I enter only the unpaid ones and if the client asks for a full statement to include paid and unpaid it would cause issues, since generating a statement from the old system would have them listed and then the unpaid ones would appear in Wave causing inconsistency, that’s why adding them under an opening balance would resolve the issue, I’d be able to generate a statement from the old system and carry on with the new system correctly as it has the opening balance reflected correctly.
So the opening balance will always be “0” in wave?
Appreciate your response.
Hi, @Salhidiq.
In that case, you would have to enter every invoice previously issued to that client. There is currently no other way in Wave to affect the numbers of a customer statement than to create invoices.
It might be simpler to prepare customer statements ahead of switching to Wave for your records and only offer customer statements from Wave that start on a specific date.
Old thread, but in case someone is led here by a search, here's how we worked around this:
For customers with a negative (i.e. "we owe them") balance
1. create a zero-cost item e.g. "Beginning Balance dummy zero cost item"
2. create invoices in the previous accounting period with the zero-cost item added.
3. record each customer's beginning balance as a payment in the previous accounting period against the dummy invoice
For customers with a positive (i.e. "they owe us") balance
1. create a unit-cost item e.g. "Beginning Balance dummy unit cost item"
2. create invoices in the previous accounting period with the unit-cost item added. Enter the customer's beginning balance as the item quantity
Seems to work well enough. It does break things like the "average time to get paid" metric in Wave but unless you rely heavily on that you should be fine
Wave does not create a separate ledger for each of your customers. All customer balances are listed in the "Accounts Receivables" ledger.
When coming from other accounting software into wave the ledger balances of your customers / suppliers maybe updated under their own ledger names created under chart of accounts. A journal entry with the closing balances of all accounts maybe posted on a date prior to accounting year. The above method of booking sales maybe done. Care needs to be taken that ledger balances of customers who have dues to us are not entered as separate ledgers but entered by above method directly as an invoice in Previous accounting year
I am starting Wave for a new financial year. I have loaded the Accounts Receivable balance as opening balance . How do I create individual customer balances for this amount?
Hey there @Ian_Nic
I've moved your post to a more appropriate existing thread. Have a read through here and see some of the feedback other users have left as well as some workarounds.