When you switch to Sapera from another accounting system, the accounting opening balances (the opening balance sheet) must be transferred. For ordinary general ledger accounts this is straightforward, but debtors and creditors require extra discipline: the balance on the debtor and creditor control accounts must not sit as one combined lump – there must be a customer (or supplier) on every entry on the control account, so the open items can be settled and reconciled afterwards.
Background: When you sell to a debtor without receiving the money immediately, the amount is debited to the debtor control account. Each individual open item therefore debits the control account. In the same way, the opening balance for debtors will typically be a debit amount on the control account (the opposite for creditors, where the balance is normally credit).
This article describes the principle we recommend: use a conversion account to move the total, so the individual open items can be imported correctly onto the control account.
Create a posting journal of the type OpeningDraft (the journal type is selected when creating or editing the journal). It is used precisely for registering opening balances when switching to Sapera. See Posting journals for how to create the journal.
If you import the debtors' total opening balance directly onto the debtor control account, the amount sits as one combined entry with no customer. That is wrong – on the control account every entry must belong to a specific debtor, so open invoices can be settled against payments later.
Import the overall opening balances (all general ledger accounts, including the debtor control account total). After step 1, the debtors' combined balance sits as a single debit amount on the debtor control account.
Create an entry that moves the balance away from the control account and onto a conversion account:
Debit: Conversion account
Credit: Debtor control account
Now the debtor control account stands at 0, and the conversion account contains the entire debit total.
Now import the individual open invoices per customer. On each entry, use:
Account: Debtor control account (with a customer) – debit
Contra account: Conversion account – credit
Each individual open item thereby debits the control account (now with a customer) and credits the conversion account.
If the open items match the opening balance (the sum of open debtor items equals the debtors' opening balance), everything balances out: the conversion account stands at 0, because step 2's debit amount is now offset by the credits in step 3. And the debtor control account contains the correct debit amount – now distributed across individual customer entries instead of one lump.
Exactly the same principle applies to creditors, just with the opposite sign, since creditors' opening balance is normally a credit amount.
First, import the creditors' combined opening balance onto the creditor control account (credit). Next, move the total to a conversion account with the entry Debit creditor control account / Credit conversion account – typically use a different account than the debtors' conversion account. Finally, import the open supplier invoices per supplier, where the creditor control account is used as the account (with a supplier, credit) and the conversion account as the contra account (debit).
In the end, the conversion account stands at 0, and the creditor control account contains the correct individual supplier entries.
The conversion account (both debtor and creditor) must stand at 0 when the process is finished. If it does not, the imported open items do not match the opening balance total – find the difference before you post.
The balance of the debtor and creditor control accounts must match the opening balance and consist of individual actor entries, not a lump. You may want to have your auditor review and approve the entries before final posting.
Specific account numbers (control accounts and conversion accounts) depend on your chart of accounts and are chosen or created by you. Create the conversion account in the chart of accounts if it does not already exist.
Note that the conversion account is not a one-time account you can clean up afterwards: once entries have been posted to an account, it can never be deleted – not even if it reaches 0. It remains in the chart of accounts with a balance of 0. That is perfectly fine; feel free to use the same conversion account for future conversions.
Want to know more?
Want to know more? See also these related articles:
Posting journals
Overview of all posting journals in Sapera. Create, edit and delete journals, and navigate to journal entries.
Posting journal
Learn to work in the posting journal: create, edit and delete postings, use keyboard shortcuts, validate and post documents, settle debtor/creditor postings and understand all columns and control panels.
