⚠️ Important: The Opening Entries menu is available only until the first financial year is finalised. If you cannot see the menu, your first financial year may already have been finalised.
Table of Contents
Introduction
In ➡️ this article, we’ve already covered the steps to create nominal opening entries. Now we need to take care of sales and purchase opening entries, although only outstanding transactions will be taken into consideration. Indigo Business has a dedicated Opening Entries screen per sales and purchase transaction type.
Creating sales and purchase opening balances entries occurs in two separate phases:
First, you create your outstanding transactions as opening entries against your Accounts Receivable or Payable and a temporary account.
Second, you clear out the temporary account balance and update the relevant income and expense accounts in the nominal ledger. We explain this phase ➡️ here.
This article will cover the first phase, using the Sales Invoice Opening Entries screen as an example. However, the steps you'll find below are applicable to all the remaining transactions, whether they're related to sales or purchase.
📋 Before You Start
Before creating sales and purchase opening entries, make sure that:
Your customers and suppliers already exist in Indigo Business. For import advice, check ➡️ this article.
Temporary Opening Balance Adjustment Accounts are created and assigned in the company settings.
🤔 Remember: these accounts are used temporarily while opening balances are being completed. At the end of the process their balance must be zero.
Creating Sales and Purchase Opening Entries
The screens are very similar to those used when creating regular transactions in Indigo Business. More on this here. Create a sales or purchase opening entry per outstanding transaction.
To do so, navigate to Opening Entries > Sales or Purchase and pick the transaction type to create opening entries for. Let's choose Sales Invoice as an example.
The Client/Supplier
Select a client (or supplier) from the Business account field. Start typing or click on the magnifying glass.
Enter a value for Ext Ref (e.g. original invoice number) and a Description, if needed.
Specify or amend the transaction Date.
Select ✔️ the Save button, or press Tab until you reach the line items grid, to:
Confirm the client's/supplier's details,
Save the invoice as draft.
The Line Items
Once the client's or supplier's details are saved, the line items section will become available.
Modify the Item detail field, if needed. It's default value is 'Opening entry'.
The Nominal Account field is defaulted to the Opening Balance Adjustment Accounts you've previously created and set up.
Specify the line item amount in Local (EUR) field.
Click Save.
Add as many line items as needed, either via the ➕ Add button in the top left corner of the line items section or by ticking the Add next line checkbox before saving the current line item.
Select Post, and confirm you want to post the transaction.
The Result
The generated opening entries will be visible in:
Nominal > Nominal Audit Trail
Sales > Audit Trail
Purchases > Audit Trail
👀 The Opening Entries' transaction IDs are prefixed with a # helping you easily identify them when sorting your transactions.
🔔 Important: The amount of all the outstanding transactions you create must include VAT. If you have a pending VAT return:
It must be completed in your previous accounting system.
VAT processing should then continue in Indigo Business from the start of use.
💪 You've made it to the end of Sales and Purchase Opening Entries in Indigo Business (Part 1)! Ready for part 2?
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