If your account balance in Cheqbook is different from your balance at the bank when you first create it, the issue may be caused by the "Estimated Opening Balance". This is a transaction the system creates for you when you add an account. It is calculated by subtracting the total amount of your transactions from the balance amount we got from the bank.
The "Estimated Opening Balance" will be, by default, the first transaction in each of your accounts and is categorized to blue. You can edit the amount of this transaction to be more accurate or delete it all together. If you add historical data downloaded from your bank prior to this opening balance, you will want to delete this transaction and make a new one at the beginning of your historical data. Sometimes such transactions are referred to as "plugs", but as long as it's not recorded in a date range you need to run reports for, this is acceptable.
Importing transactions BEFORE this date
Sometimes when you first setup a bank account, it doesn't go back far enough. In which case you want to upload transactions before the this date. To do so follow this FAQ: https://cheqbook.zendesk.com/knowledge/editor/01HX0F90SWQ2BG10YQZ9GMH1ZD/en-us?brand_id=1474656
When you do this you have to delete and reestablish (or just redate and change the amount of) this "Estimated Opening Balance" transaction to before the range you're importing.
For example, you link your bank and it the transactions it's able to get go back to July 1st of last year, and on June 30th Cheqbook creates a $100 plug (Estimated Opening Balance). If Cheqbook did the calculation correctly $100 was the balance on the day before the start of the imports (July 1st).
Now you upload a file that contains data from January 1st to June 30th. Afterwards the plug for $100 has to be dated December 31st of the YEAR BEFORE, and the amount has to be adjusted so that the opening balance on January 1st matches the actual bank balance on that date. If that balance was $250, then set the transaction to that amount.
Afterwards always reconcile your bank account by following these procedures: https://cheqbook.zendesk.com/knowledge/editor/01JQCSGNW7CYYRJR9BZ5T6WQM1/en-us?brand_id=1474656
Comments
2 comments
Please add a link to "how to create an opening balance" as your last says to make a new one, but I can not find out how to make a new entry for an opening balance in either a linked or unlinked account.
You can create an opening balance by making a manual journal entry the day prior to your first transaction using the steps below.
https://cheqbook.zendesk.com/entries/25575778-How-can-I-make-a-manual-or-journal-entry-
An example opening balance would have the following info
Date: Day before your earliest transacation for that account
Payee: Estimated Opening Balance
Account: Opening Equity Balances - Unreconciled
Amount: The closing balance on that day. This balance can be found in your bank statment.
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