Opening Balances Guide

How to bring forward customer and vendor opening balances when starting a company in QBM or moving from another system.

Administration & Setup Go-Live End-User Guide

Overview

Opening balances are used when your company starts using QBM and still has unpaid customer invoices or unpaid vendor bills from before go-live.

Important: Opening balances are for bringing forward old balances. Do not use them for new live business transactions after normal operations have started.

Where To Access

Balance Type How It Is Commonly Opened
Customer opening balance From the customer details workflow when setting up or editing a customer.
Vendor opening balance From the vendor details workflow when setting up or editing a vendor.
Tip: QBM opens the beginning-balance screen in the context of the customer or vendor, so the outstanding items stay attached to the right account history.

Customer Opening Balances

Tab Path: Customer Details > Opening Balance
  1. Open the customer record.
  2. Open the beginning-balance window for that customer.
  3. Enter each unpaid invoice separately when a document-level carry-forward is needed.
  4. Review the invoice number, reference, description, date, and amount.
  5. Save the opening balances, then review the customer balance again.

This approach gives a cleaner customer history than entering only one total amount, especially if you still need to collect several outstanding invoices.

Vendor Opening Balances

Tab Path: Vendor Details > Opening Balance
  1. Open the vendor record.
  2. Open the beginning-balance window for that vendor.
  3. Enter each unpaid vendor bill separately when practical.
  4. Review the date, reference, description, and amount before saving.
  5. Save the balances and confirm the vendor total afterward.

This is especially useful when you want Pay Bills and vendor follow-up to continue from the correct outstanding document list.

Important Columns

Column What It Means
Invoice Number The original external or carry-forward invoice/bill number.
Reference Extra identifying information such as supplier reference or internal note.
Description Short explanation of the opening entry.
Date The original or approved carry-forward date for the outstanding balance.
Amount / Price The unpaid value still outstanding at go-live.
Currency / Rate Used where the opening balance must be tracked in foreign currency.

Best Practice

  • Prepare opening balance data before go-live instead of typing from paper at the last minute.
  • Enter one row per unpaid document when you still need document-level follow-up.
  • Use clear references so old balances can be traced back to the source system or source documents.
  • Check customer and vendor totals after import or manual entry.
  • Do not mix opening balances with new-period transactions.