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Launching a bank account
Launching a bank account
in QuickBooks is quite simple, once you
understand a few complicating factors.
The process is really similar to a
reconciliation. The first critical task
is to state your beginning bank balance
correctly, XE "beginning bank balance" XE "balance:bank, opening" XE "opening balance:bank" , which means we must know the lay of the land. Accounts in QuickBooks all start out as an empty framework. Money amounts come into the accounts as transactions and only as transactions. That includes the beginning balance. It may be shown as “Beginning Balance,” but functionally, it is just one more transaction. The next question is, where are you coming from?
If you reconcile
your bank statements, let’s begin with the last one that you have reconciled. The statement shows an ending balance, which can go right into the QuickBooks bank account register, but with a different date.
As the beginning balance,
you want that figure to appear at the top of
the register, and here is the catch.
All registers in QuickBooks always and
invariably display transactions in order by
date (and with some defined sequences within
one date.) For the opening balance to
be at the top, it must have the earliest
date. We may have to tell a
constructive white lie, or perhaps adjust our
viewpoint on the date connected with that
balance.
Looking at your check
register, you may find checks in transit or
perhaps a deposit not yet recorded.
Assuming that you found some prior
transactions, the statement balance was
effectively the balance before any of them
occurred. Therefore, in the QuickBooks
bank account, the best date for the beginning
balance is the day before the earliest other
transaction. Before actually entering
the balance, we must take care of some other
details.
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