Editing an Account Opening Balance

[Bec-M]

I have a few expense accounts that have an opening balance entered.  I now need to edit these amounts to zero.

I have tried editing the individual account as well as through the 'edit accounts' option.  Every time I try to save the changes I get the error message "Opening balances from a previous financial year may not be changed for P&L accounts."

I imported the chart of accounts from an old version of MYOB.  On the chart of accounts it has the opening balance date of 1 July 2019 however my subscription to MYOB Essentials did not start until August 2021.

The current financial year in Business Settings is 2022.  I have tried changing this to 2019 and 2018 but still unable to change the opening balance in the expense accounts.

Please help!

[Sean_DC]

Hi @Bec-M 

Thank you for your post.

Generally speaking, a user would enter the beginning balances of Balance Sheet accounts (Asset, Liability, and Equity accounts). If you configure the initial setup of the company file where you have a later conversion month than the start of the financial year, you can enter opening balances for your Profit and Loss accounts (Income, Cost of Sales, and Expense accounts). 

If you have closed a financial year you will no longer be able to enter opening balances for your Profit and Loss accounts. The field will still be listed, but you will encounter an error message: Beginning/Opening balances from a previous year may not be changed for P&L accounts when saving the account. This is to alert the user that you cannot enter that opening balance as the financial year is no longer the same as when the company file was first created.

Typically, if you are in a situation where you have an opening balance for a Profit and Loss account there is an impact to another account be it a Balance Sheet or another Profit and Loss account. In this case, a journal transaction or similar transaction would need to be recorded to reflect that. I would recommend speaking with an accountant for further assistance with adding that opening balance to a pre-existing Profit and Loss account. 


Please feel free to post again. I'm happy to assist further.

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[Bec-M]

Thanks Sean,

The information you have provided is great but not lining up with what MYOB is allowing me to do.

The opening balances were entered at the start of the subscription as at July 2021, being the 2021/2022 financial year.

The 2021/2022 financial year has not been closed, nor has a lock date been entered.  In business settings the financial year remains as 2022.

I have undone all the bank account reconciliations in case that was effectively locking the expense accounts.

I am still unable to amend the opening balance of the expense accounts.

The opening balance figures are causing an issue with the balance sheet report and my accountant cannot proceed until I clear the opening balances.

Thanks in advance

[gavin12345]

Hi @Bec-M 

If your start month is July, MYOB does not allow you to set opening balances for P&L accounts - as the balance as at 1 July for these accounts should be Nil. 

A better option than using MYOB's opening balance feature is to instead enter a 1 July General Journal with memo Opening balances. You might need to speak to your accountant or bookkeeper as to where the balancing item should go.

Otherwise you need to set you conversion month to Aug to use MYOB's opening balances for P&L accounts.

Regards

Gavin

[Bec-M]

Hi Gavin,

MYOB allowed an opening balance to be entered when creating the P&L accounts.  Now I am trying to adjust these back to Nil but MYOB is not letting this happen.

MYOB will not let me change the opening balance date to August as there are transactions in July.

A general journal dated 1 July does not solve the problem as the balancing side does not fix the Balance Sheet being out.

Kind regards,