Opening Stock
Bring the stock you already hold onto the books — the import wizard, the one-per-location rule, and how to clear a mistake.
On the day you go live you already own stock. Opening stock is the one-time act of telling Trabalance how much, where, and what it cost — and unlike the item catalog it is an accounting entry, not a data load. It debits inventory and credits your opening balance account, so it is deliberately kept separate from importing items.
Two ways in
| Route | Best for | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Operations → Inventories → Import | Going live, or adding a whole location | A three-step wizard that takes a spreadsheet, previews it grouped by item, and posts each row as an opening balance. |
| An item → Adjustments → Opening Balance | One item, or a correction found later | The single-item form, with a row per location. See Stock adjustments. |
Both post the same thing. The wizard exists because typing a hundred items into the single-item form is not a plan.
The import wizard
This is the date applied to every row that does not carry its own Date column — normally your go-live date or the date of the physical count. It cannot be in the future.
CSV, XLSX, or XLS. Excel date cells are read as calendar dates, not as the serial numbers Excel stores them as, so a Date column formatted as a date works correctly.
The wizard reports Items, Rows (with any skipped rows named), Units, and Value, then lists the rows grouped by item with each item's total quantity. Nothing has posted yet.
Rows post in batches. The result counts Posted, Failed, and Skipped. Leave the window open until it finishes — the wizard backs off and retries by itself if the server rate-limits a large file.
The columns
| Column | Required? | Details |
|---|---|---|
| SKU | One of the three | Preferred. Two items can share a name; they cannot share a SKU. |
| Barcode | One of the three | Used when there is no SKU on the row. |
| Name | One of the three | The last resort. If two items already carry that name the row is refused rather than guessed at. |
| Location | Yes | The business unit holding the stock, matched by name. Header aliases accepted: Location, Center, Center Name, Business Unit. |
| Quantity | Yes | Must be greater than zero. A zero or negative row is refused — opening stock brings stock on, it never takes it off. |
| Rate | No | The per-unit cost this stock is valued at. It becomes the item's starting cost, so it matters. Use the book value from your previous system, or the last purchase price if you have no historical cost. |
| Date | No | Per-row effective date. Rows without one use the opening balance date set at the top of the wizard. |
Items are matched SKU → Barcode → Name, in that order. One row is one item at one location; an item held at three locations gets three rows.
Quantity is easy to check against a shelf. Rate sets the starting weighted average cost, which then drives cost of sales on every subsequent sale and the inventory figure on your balance sheet. A blank or wrong Rate does not show up as an error — it shows up months later as a margin that makes no sense.
What it posts
| Account | Debit | Credit | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inventory Account (from the item's mapping) | Quantity × Rate | — | Stock brought onto the balance sheet at cost |
| Opening balance account | — | Quantity × Rate | The business's opening-balance equity account — the standard treatment for migration entries |
There is no profit or loss effect. You are not buying the stock, you are declaring that you already have it.
One opening balance per item, per location
An (item, location) pair can carry exactly one opening balance. Import the same pair a second time and the row is reported as skipped, not applied — the wizard will not quietly double your stock because a file was uploaded twice.
This is also why a correction is not a re-import. If an opening balance was posted with the wrong quantity or the wrong rate, you either:
- Clear it and post it again — see below, or
- Adjust the difference with a Qty Adjustment, which leaves the original entry on record.
Clearing is right during go-live, while you are still reconciling. Adjusting is right once the books have been used, because it keeps the audit trail intact.
Clearing an opening balance
Navigate to: Operations → Inventories → the eraser icon (Clear opening balance), available to administrators
The dialog lists only items that actually carry a posted opening balance. You tick the locations first, then the items — clearing is bound to the pairs you tick, never to the whole business. Items at locations you did not tick stay untouched, and the dialog says so on each chip.
The result is reported as Cleared / Skipped / Failed, so a partial clear is visible rather than assumed.
Clearing removes the opening balance and its journal. It does not undo the sales, purchases, or adjustments that have happened since — those still reference the item and will now sit on top of a different starting point. Clear during setup; adjust afterwards.
Locations you are not allowed to touch
The import checks the locations your rows actually name against your own allow-list. A file naming a business unit outside your access is refused with the unit named, and nothing posts. Locations you cannot see that the file does not mention are irrelevant — their mere existence never blocks a valid import.
Administrators are not scoped this way. Staff cannot run this import at all.
Opening stock is staged as a batch like every other import, so a bad file can be reversed rather than cleared row by row. The reversal also restores the item's previous cost at that location.
Related
- Stock adjustments — the single-item Opening Balance form, and Qty Adjustment for corrections
- Importing items — the catalog load that deliberately carries no quantity
- Stock overview — where the resulting quantities and value appear
- Movement history — the opening entry as the first movement row
- Business units — the locations the Location column matches