Customer Opening Balances
The Opening Balance document carries what a customer already owed you when you started on Trabalance. It posts to Accounts Receivable against Opening Balance Equity, and it is settled before any invoice.
When you move onto Trabalance mid-life, your customers already owe you money. That history is carried by one Opening Balance document per customer — not by back-dated invoices.
Creating one
Go to Finance → Opening Balances, choose the Customer tab, then New. One document per customer.
| Field | Required | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Customer | Yes | The customer this balance belongs to. The posting is tagged with this party, which is what makes it appear on their statement and aging. |
| Date | Yes | The date the balance is taken as at — normally the day before you start transacting in Trabalance. |
| Currency | Auto | The customer's currency, with an exchange rate when it is not your base currency. |
| Items | Yes | The balance itself. Either one lump sum, or one line per outstanding invoice (see the two modes below). |
| Subject, Tags, Center, Project | No | Optional metadata, the same set every document carries. |
Two ways to enter it
| Mode | When to use it | What posts |
|---|---|---|
| Lump sum | You only need the total the customer owes you. | One debit to Accounts Receivable for the amount, tagged to the customer. |
| Invoice-style | You want the individual open invoices, so ageing and settlement behave like the real history. | One debit line per invoice (its subtotal plus tax), all tagged to the customer. |
Invoice-style is the better choice when you care about which invoice a later receipt settles, because each original document is represented rather than a single blended figure.
What it posts
| Account | Debit | Credit | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accounts Receivable | Opening balance | — | Tagged with the customer, so it lands on their statement and aging |
| Opening Balance Equity | — | Opening balance | The balancing entry — this is migration history, not new revenue |
An opening balance records a debt that already existed. It credits Opening Balance Equity, never a sales account — the revenue was earned on your old system and must not be counted again here. A credit balance (a customer in credit) posts the other way round.
How it is settled
Opening balances are settled first — before any invoice, whatever the dates say.
When a receipt is applied to a customer, Trabalance exhausts the opening balance / statement before it touches any invoice — even when an invoice is older. Only within the invoices themselves does age decide the order, by each invoice's own date. This is deliberate: the migrated history clears before the business you have written in Trabalance.
Each target is exhausted in full before the next one receives anything; cash is never spread across several documents to avoid finishing one.
Related
- The vendor side of the same job: Vendor opening balances.
- Opening balances for ledger accounts rather than parties: Opening balances.
- How receipts choose what to settle: Receipt matching rules.