Video: Adding or changing an opening balance

When you first created an account, you may have overlooked entering an opening balance or entered the wrong balance. In this video, you’ll see how you can change or add an opening balance for an account.

Video script:

The opening balance is the amount of money or value of an account when you start using QuickBooks. For example, if you have $5000 in a savings account when you start using QuickBooks, you enter that as your opening balance when you create the account.

If you entered the wrong amount or never added an opening balance to one of your accounts, it’s not too late to make changes. In cases where you entered an incorrect amount and did not record any transactions yet for that account, you can simply edit the account from the Chart of Accounts. Then, you can enter the correct opening balance.

If transactions have already been recorded, you can open the Chart of Accounts and double-click the account to open the register. Locate the Opening Balance Equity entry and change it to the correct number.

If you never added an Opening Balance Equity entry in your account’s register, you’ll need to add one. Add a transaction to the register with Opening Balance Equity as the description. Also, add the date you want to record for the opening balance.

If this is a bank account, enter the amount in the Deposit column.

Finally, if this an asset, liability, or equity account, enter the amount in the Increase column. For a credit card account, enter the amount in the Charge column


You can also post your own question to the QuickBooks for Mac community.