Chart of Accounts & Opening Balances at Go-Live
Stock gets counted. The financial side of a go-live has no equivalent — and in a system with no manual journal entry, the way you establish an opening position is by entering real documents. What that means in practice, why your chart of accounts has no numbers, and where the statutory book still belongs with your accountant.
Ask a vendor how you load your opening trial balance and watch what happens. The confident ones say yes and cannot show you the record it creates. The careful ones ask which balances you mean. The honest answer, for most operations systems in this price bracket including this one, is that you do not load a trial balance at all — you enter the open documents behind it, and the balances follow.
That is a more significant statement than it sounds, because it changes your go-live date, your accountant's involvement, and what you should expect the system to be for. It is worth understanding before you plan around it rather than after.
What "opening balances" actually means, split into four things
The phrase covers four different problems that people discuss as one, which is why the conversation goes badly. Separate them and each has a clear answer.
Four things called opening balances
What you mean How it gets established
Stock on hand A physical count, entered as a count session
The one with a clean mechanism. Covered in opening stock balances at go-live.
What customers owe you Each unpaid invoice entered as an invoice
Not a single "debtors: KES 2.4m" figure. Every open invoice, with its own date and customer, so the ageing report means something from day one.
What you owe suppliers Each unpaid bill entered as a payable
Same logic in reverse. A lump sum gives you a total with no ageing, no supplier detail and nothing to reconcile a statement against.
Bank, cash, capital, retained earnings Not established in the system at all
There is no manual journal entry, so these have no entry point. This is the boundary, and it is the reason the next section exists.
Why the ledger here is not a statutory book of account
This is a position rather than a gap we are apologising for, and it is worth stating plainly because it determines who does what after go-live.
Every journal entry in the system is produced by a business flow: a sale posts revenue and cost of goods, a stock check-in posts to inventory, an expense posts to the expense account and to bank or payables, a POS return reverses both legs. Nothing lets a person post an entry by hand. That means there is no accrual, no prepayment, no deferral, no depreciation charge and no correcting journal — and therefore no way to produce a complete statutory set of accounts from inside the system.
The accounting layer, tested against what an accountant needs
| Capability | Here |
|---|---|
| Every transaction posts double entry automatically | Yes |
| Trial balance, income statement, balance sheet views | Partly — configurable by you |
| Numbered statutory chart of accounts | No |
| Manual journal entry | No |
| Accruals, prepayments, deferrals, depreciation | No |
| Retained earnings and capital represented | No |
| Bank reconciliation against a statement feed | No |
| Period lock that bars posting into a closed month | No |
| Departmental or project dimensions on a journal line | No |
Built and maintained Configurable by you, not maintained by us Not built
Read that table as a description of scope, not a list of promises deferred. The system is a book of operational record that posts honestly as things happen; the statutory book is assembled by your accountant from it. Anyone selling you an SME operations platform as a replacement for that relationship is overselling, and the tell is usually that they cannot show you a manual journal either.
The [chart of accounts](/glossary/chart-of-accounts), and the missing number column
Accounts here have a name and a description. They do not have an account code, a parent account, or an account class — the columns simply are not there — and statement grouping happens through a fixed internal map rather than by reading a numbering scheme. Two consequences follow directly, and both are things to plan around rather than discover.
- A numbered statutory chart cannot be reproduced. If your accountant works to a numbered plan — and if you operate under a SYSCOHADA-style requirement, that is not optional — the numbering lives on their side, not here.
- The account name is doing all the work, so name accounts the way you want them to read on a report, and keep the list short. Thirty well-named accounts beat two hundred where nobody can remember the difference between two of them.
- Grouping is by internal key, which means an account you create sits where the map puts it. You are choosing names within a structure, not designing the structure.
- The equity group is empty in the shipped configuration, so retained earnings and capital have no home and a complete balance sheet is not producible from here.
None of that stops the system doing its actual job, which is making sure that every movement of stock and money leaves a matched pair of entries with a reference back to the document that caused it. That is the part most SMEs are genuinely missing, and it is the part what a chart of accounts is and what a trial balance is are worth reading alongside this.
A go-live sequence for the finance side
Five days, in this order
Note the deliberate omission: no attempt to establish bank, cash, capital or retained earnings, because there is no mechanism and pretending otherwise wastes a week. Your opening balance sheet stays with your accountant. What you gain here is a live, document-backed AR and AP position from day one — which is what most SMEs were actually missing.
Pick a cut-off at the start of a period
The first of a month at minimum; the first of a financial year if you can wait for it. A mid-month cut-off means every report for that month is half in one system and half in the other, and reconciling it is work that produces nothing you will ever use again.
The one thing to insist on with your accountant
Get them into the conversation before go-live, not after. Not to approve the software — to state what they will need out of it monthly, in what shape, and to agree who enters the open items. In practice they are often the right person to do days 3 and 4 above, because they know which of those old invoices are collectable and which have been quietly dead for two years.
Also settle the boring mechanical question of how figures get to them: which reports, which format, on what day of the month. Doing that once at go-live prevents the recurring monthly negotiation that most SMEs never quite escape. And be clear about the eTIMS boundary — invoice transmission to KRA is built for Kenya, but PAYE, NSSF and SHA figures compute here and somebody still files them, which Kenya compliance features sets out in full.
Our take
Do not try to load a trial balance — enter the open invoices and bills as documents and let the balances follow, pick a cut-off at the start of a period, keep the chart of accounts short and well-named because names are all you have, and leave the statutory book with your accountant. That is a smaller claim than most vendors make and it is the one that survives the first audit.
Bring your accountant to the second meeting
We will go through exactly which figures come out of the system monthly, in what shape, and which parts of the statutory close stay on their side — before you commit to anything, rather than in month three.
See plans & pricingFrequently asked questions
Can we load an opening trial balance?
No. There is no manual journal entry in the system and the opening-balances template downloads without an importer behind it, so balances cannot be posted as balances. Open customer invoices and open supplier bills are entered as documents and the AR and AP positions follow from them. Bank, cash, capital and retained earnings have no entry point at all — they stay with your accountant.
Why is there no manual journal entry?
Because every entry is produced by a business flow that references the document causing it — a sale, a stock check-in, an expense, a return. That makes the ledger reliable as an operational record and unsuitable as a statutory book, since accruals, prepayments, deferrals, depreciation and correcting entries all require a hand-posted journal. It is the clearest single reason your accountant still assembles the statutory accounts.
Why does the chart of accounts have no account numbers?
The accounts table carries a name and a description and no code, parent or class column, and statement grouping runs off a fixed internal map rather than a numbering scheme. Practically: name accounts the way you want them to read on a report, keep the list short, and if you work to a numbered statutory plan, that numbering lives with your accountant.
When should our go-live cut-off be?
The first day of a month at minimum, the first day of a financial year if you can wait. A mid-month cut-off splits every report for that month across two systems and generates reconciliation work with no lasting value.
Should we enter open invoices individually or as one total?
Individually, always. A single "debtors: KES 2.4m" entry gives you a total with no ageing, no customer detail and nothing to reconcile a statement against. Entering them one by one also functions as an audit of which receivables are genuinely collectable, which is usually a useful and slightly uncomfortable exercise.
Does the system stop us posting into a closed month?
No. A period close is recorded, but it does not bar movement and there are no closing entries — so a backdated transaction can still land in a month you thought was finished. Treat the close as a checkpoint you enforce by discipline, and check the period totals again before sending anything to your accountant.
