Opening balances (switching from another system)

Accounting → Opening Balance. This is where you tell KiraKira+ what your business already owns and owes on the day you start using it.

Skip this if you are starting fresh

A brand-new business has nothing to bring in — go straight to your first invoice. This page is for moving from another system, from a spreadsheet, or from a paper book, where the story did not start at zero.

Pick your day, first

Choose the day you switch — the end of a month is easiest, and the end of your financial year is easiest of all. Everything up to that day stays in the old system; everything after it happens in KiraKira+. What you enter here is the photograph taken at closing time on that last day.

Three tabs, two different jobs

The screen has three tabs, and understanding the split is most of the battle:

Tab	What it holds	Does it hit your accounts?
Chart of Accounts	One opening figure per Balance Sheet account	Yes — this is your books
Opening Stock	Quantity and cost per product	No — stock records only
AR / AP Documents	The individual unpaid invoices and bills	No — customer/supplier records only

The two "No" tabs are lists, not bookkeeping. They exist so you can chase a specific unpaid invoice and see real stock counts. The Chart of Accounts tab is what your accounts read — which means you enter the totals in both places on purpose, and they have to agree. That mirrors how UBS, SQL Account and AutoCount work, so if your accountant has done a migration before, this will look familiar.

1 · Chart of Accounts — the figures that count

		What it does
1	Guidance banner	The rules, restated on screen — worth reading once
2	Status	Whether your debits and credits agree yet
3	Account	One line per account. Click to pick
4	Debit	Things you own or are owed
5	Credit	Things you owe, plus equity
6	Add Line	One line per account

Only Balance Sheet accounts are offered — the picker simply does not list your income and expense accounts:

Why no income or expenses?

Profit and loss accounts start again at zero every financial year, so an "opening balance" for them is meaningless — last year's sales belong to last year's accounts. Your accumulated result comes in through Retained Earnings instead, as one equity figure.

Debits must equal credits. They will not, at first — the difference is everything not yet accounted for, and the last line mops it up: Opening Balance Equity. That account exists for exactly this, and your accountant can reclassify it later. When Status says the two sides agree, you are done.

Scenario — Seri Maju's opening position

Seri Maju switches over on 30 June. From their old system's balance sheet at close of business that day:

Account	Debit	Credit
Cash At Bank — CIMB	18,400.00
Cash In Hand	350.00
Account Receivable (control)	12,750.00
Inventory	9,200.00
Furniture & Fittings	4,000.00
Accounts Payable (control)		7,300.00
Sales Tax Payable		480.00
Retained Earnings		22,000.00
Opening Balance Equity (the plug)		14,920.00
Totals	44,700.00	44,700.00

Three of those figures are promises to the other two tabs:

• Inventory 9,200.00 must equal the Opening Stock total.
• Account Receivable 12,750.00 must equal the opening invoices you enter.
• Accounts Payable 7,300.00 must equal the opening bills.

The last line is arithmetic, not judgement: add up the debits, add up the credits, and put the difference in Opening Balance Equity. If your old system handed you a balance sheet that already balanced, this line will be small or zero.

Putting one of them in

Every line goes in the same way, so here is one start to finish. The pictures use a smaller two-line example than the table above, so the whole grid stays readable — the steps are identical whether you have two lines or twenty.

Click the account cell on an empty line. The picker lists Balance Sheet accounts only, by name and code:

Type the figure in Debit or Credit — never both. Assets and things you are owed are debits; what you owe, and equity, are credits. After one line the Status shows how far from balanced you still are:

Off by is normal while you are part-way through — it only has to reach zero by the time you save. When the two sides finally agree, Status says Balanced and the save button comes alive:

Work down your trial balance

Enter the lines in the order they appear on your accountant's trial balance and tick each one off. Off by then doubles as your progress bar — it should shrink towards zero as you go, and if it jumps the wrong way you know which line to look at.

2 · Opening Stock — what is on the shelf

Add each product, its quantity, and what it cost you — not what you sell it for. The Total Stock Value at the top is the number that must match the Inventory line on the Chart of Accounts tab.

Set this during setup only

As the banner says: once a product has had any stock movement, its opening figures lock. From then on, corrections go through Stock Adjustment — which is right, because by then a change is a real event in your business, not a setup detail.

3 · AR / AP Documents — who owes what

Enter each unpaid invoice your customers still owe you, and each unpaid bill you still owe suppliers, with New Document. Credit notes and debit notes that were still outstanding go here too.

This is the tab people are tempted to skip, and the one that pays off most. Enter the individual documents and you can:

• record a payment against that invoice when the customer pays,
• see a real aged-receivables report from day one,
• tell a customer exactly which invoice is outstanding.

Enter only the lump 12,750.00 on the accounts tab and you will know that you are owed money — but not by whom.

Check the three agree

The total of…	must equal…
Opening Stock value	Inventory on the accounts tab
Opening invoices	Account Receivable on the accounts tab
Opening bills	Accounts Payable on the accounts tab

KiraKira+ checks the AR and AP pairs for you and shows a banner if they drift. Stock you reconcile by eye — each of the two tabs carries a reminder pointing at the other.

Ask your accountant for one thing

If this page feels like heavy going, ask your accountant for a trial balance as at your switch-over date. That is a single page listing exactly these accounts and figures, and it is an entirely normal thing to ask for.

Next: Stock you already hold — the second of the three opening layers. The Inventory figure you entered above has to match what you record there.