Why enter opening bills
When you start a new financial year, a customer may owe you money from several old invoices. Smart Books lets you list those invoices one by one, so that later receipts and payments can be matched to the right bill. This is called bill-by-bill tracking. The bills you enter must add up to the party's opening balance.
Before you start
- The account (ledger) must exist, for example a customer or supplier.
- The ledger must keep bills. Customers and suppliers do this automatically. For any other ledger, tick Bill-by-bill under Credit & billing on the account.
- Have the list of unpaid invoices as they stood on the first day of the year.
Step by step
- Open Masters, choose Accounts, and open the customer or supplier you want to edit.
- In the Opening balance card, enter the Amount and pick the Balance type: Debit (Dr) or Credit (Cr). A customer who owes you is usually Debit.
- Scroll to Opening bills (bill-by-bill) and select Add bill.
- Type the Bill / invoice no. and the Bill date. A bill normally dates from before the year began. If the date is on or after the year start, you will see a warning.
- Optionally set a Due date. If you leave it blank, Smart Books uses the party's credit days when you enter a bill date.
- Enter the Pending amount. This is what was still unpaid on the first day of the year, and it must be more than zero.
- Check Dr / Cr. It starts as Dr for customers and Cr for suppliers.
- If part of the invoice was already paid before the year began, type the invoice's full value in Bill amount (optional).
- Add the next bill. Pressing Enter in the last field of the last row opens a new row.
- Watch the summary above the table: Ledger opening balance, Opening bills and Difference. When they agree, it shows Bills match the opening balance.
- Save the account.
When the bills do not match
If your bills add up to less than the opening balance, you can tick Keep the difference On Account. The leftover amount then stays unallocated, and later receipts and payments can still be adjusted against it. If you would rather fix the balance itself, select Set the opening balance to the bills total.
If the bills add up to more than the opening balance, or sit on the other side, the account cannot be saved until you correct them. You also need an opening balance before you can enter bills.
Locked bills
Some bills appear with a lock. Smart Books counts them in the totals but you cannot change them here. This happens when a receipt or payment of this year already settles the bill, when the bill was carried forward from last year, or when it is in a foreign currency.
Common messages
- Bill / invoice number is required: fill in the number.
- This bill number is entered more than once: each invoice number can appear only once for a party.
- Bill amount is less than the pending amount: the invoice value cannot be smaller than what is still unpaid.