How to Change the Opening Balance of a Bank Account in Quickbooks
Did you accidentally enter the wrong starting balance when adding a new bank account to Quickbooks? It’s important to fix this problem to prevent it from affecting your accounting records. Thankfully, Quickbooks makes changing the opening balance of a bank account a quick and easy process.
To change the opening balance of your account, log in to Quickbooks, click the gear icon and choose “Chart of Accounts.” Next, scroll through your list of accounts until you find the one with the incorrect opening balance. Once you’ve found it, click the drop-down menu next to the name and choose “Report.” Next, click the funnel icon on the left and change the transaction date to “All Dates,” after which you can proceed to run the report.
This report should provide a list of all transactions associated with the respective bank account. Scroll all the way to the bottom, where you should see the opening balance. Clicking the opening balance transaction will open it, redirecting you to the “Bank Deposit” menu. From here, you can modify information associated with the transaction, including the dollar amount and date. Assuming the date is correct, you only need to modify the opening balance. So, change the balance so that accurately reflects the actual opening balance of the bank account at the time when you initially added to Quickbooks. Double check to ensure this information is correct and click “Save” to complete the process.
On the other hand, if you didn’t enter an opening balance when you initially added the bank account, you have one of several options. You can make a deposit to the account and choose “Opening Balance Equity” for the offset account, or you can make a new journal entry that debits the account and credits the Opening Balance Equity. Alternatively, you can re-add the bank account to Quickbooks and then merge it with the existing account. Either of these three options will allow you to adjust the opening balance so that it accurately reflects the actual balance in your bank account.
While creating a new bank account and merging it with the existing account of the same type is likely the easiest way to change the balance, it’s critical that you actually merge the two accounts. Allowing the same account to be used in two instances can cause problems with your accounting records. Refer to this Intuit article for more information on how to merge accounts.
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