Primo postings

A guide to entering primo postings in Xena, also known as opening balances.

 

Primo postings, also referred to as opening balances, are the initial amounts for your financial accounts, debtors, creditors, and possibly inventory. If your business is newly established, you do not need to enter primo postings. However, if you already have an established business, at some point you will need to enter primo postings in your accounting.

 

Entering Primo postings

You can start with invoicing in Xena and later enter primo postings, or you can choose to start with primo postings first. Regardless of the order, you will need to enter primo postings at some point unless you are creating a newly established business.

However, it is advantageous to have your bank balance as well as the balances for your customers and suppliers entered from the beginning before the bookkeeping starts. You can start by entering partial primo postings in Xena. It is not necessary to enter them all at once!

The opening balance is entered under the menu Ledger > Primo postings. Open the first fiscal year by clicking on it.

NOTE: Before entering primo postings, make sure that the start and end dates for the period are correct. If you are unsure, contact your accountant.

 

Income statement

Only in the first fiscal year is it possible to enter primo postings for the income statement, customers, suppliers, and inventory. This is used if you start using Xena in the middle of an accounting period. In the following fiscal years, you can only enter primo postings for assets and liabilities.

For each opening entry, you must either select an existing financial account or create a new one. All primo postings must be associated with a ledger account. However, in the Nett turn over and Product consumption groups, you choose between your article groups. If you have not specified account numbers for the article group accounts, you can do so via the article group or directly in the chart of accounts.

 

 

Assets and Liabilities

The opening balance is entered in the same way as in the income statement. However, there are some exceptions that you should be aware of.

 

Customers and Suppliers via Primo postings

Entering balances for customers and suppliers is done through the 'Customers' and 'Suppliers' tabs under Primo postings.

• You can enter multiple lines per customer/supplier, so you can enter outstanding balances at the invoice level if desired.
• The date of the primo postings must be before the start date of the fiscal year.

 

Customers and Suppliers via Ledger entry

If you start the accounting in the middle of a fiscal year, you can enter opening balances for your customers and suppliers through the ledger entry instead. Start by creating 2 separate financial accounts for this purpose and enter the total balance for both:

1. Create a ledger account for the balance of your customers in the group Assets > Other Receivables
2. For example, name it 'Opening balance customers'
3. Create a ledger account for the balance of your suppliers in the group Liabilities > Other short term debt
4. For example, name it 'Opening balance suppliers'
5. Enter the opening balance for the new 2 ledger accounts via Ledger> Primo postings as usual.

Now you have entered the opening balance for customers and suppliers but as a total sum. The next step is to distribute this balance among your customers and suppliers through the ledger entry:

1. Open any draft under the Ledger > Ledger entry menu
2. Create a line for each customer that has an opening balance (select the type 'Partner payment' on the lines)
3. Enter the amount on the debit side (for a positive balance)
4. End with a line where you select your financial account 'Opening balance debtors'
5. Enter the total sum of your customer opening balances on the credit side. This amount must match what you previously entered under primo postings
6. Check under 'Booking results' at the bottom that the account 'Opening balance customers' is reset to zero
7. Bookkeep the ledger

Enter your suppliers in the same way. Here, the balance for each supplier should be entered on the credit side, and the total sum for the new account 'Opening balance suppliers' should be entered on the debit side.

Here is an example of an entered opening balance ledger entry for debtors:

 

Stock value

You only need to enter opening balances for your stock if you use stock management. If you do NOT use stock management, simply enter your total stock value directly into a ledger account under Liabilities in the 'Manual stock' group.

If you have installed the stock management app, you need to enter the quantity + value per article to calculate the total stock value. Refer to the section on booking the stock value.

 

Calculation of Equity

Once you have entered all or part of the primo postings, you need to click the 'Recalculate primo postings' button to calculate equity.

 

The total balance for the income, assets, liabilities, customers, suppliers, and stock will be added under the group Equity in the 'Liabilities' tab. This means that you never enter the opening balance for equity yourself.

The calculated balance for equity must be reconciled with the expected balance in the account. If the figure does not match, you have entered an incorrect opening balance on one of the other accounts/tabs.

Every time you change your opening balances, you need to run this recalculation to get the correct calculated balance for equity.

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