Chart of Accounts & Opening Balances at Go-Live
Stock gets counted. The financial side of a go-live has no equivalent — so you build the opening position in two halves: the open invoices and bills entered as real documents, and everything else posted as one manual journal. What that means in practice, why your chart of accounts has no numbers, and what 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 this one, is that you load a trial balance in two halves: the open documents behind receivables and payables, entered as documents so they age, and the rest — bank, cash, assets, loans, capital — posted as a single opening journal.
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, assets, loans, capital, retained earnings One manual journal, dated the day before cut-off
Posted by hand against the opening balance equity account, with figures your accountant has agreed. This is the one place a lump sum is right, because none of these balances needs ageing.
What the ledger here can hold, and what stays with your accountant
It is worth stating plainly, because it determines who does what after go-live.
Most journal entries in the system are 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. Alongside those, a person can post a manual journal — saved as a draft, optionally sent for approval above a threshold you set (the author cannot approve their own), and corrected by a reversal that posts the mirror entries and keeps the original. That is where an opening balance, an accrual, a prepayment or a correcting entry goes. Posted entries are never deleted, and a month you have closed refuses anything dated into it.
The accounting layer, tested against what an accountant needs
| Capability | Here |
|---|---|
| Every transaction posts double entry automatically | Yes |
| Trial balance, income statement, balance sheet and cash-flow statement | Yes |
| Numbered statutory chart of accounts | No |
| Manual journal entry, with optional approval and reversal | Yes |
| Accruals, prepayments and deferrals (by manual journal); depreciation runs | Yes |
| Retained earnings and capital represented | Yes |
| Bank reconciliation against an imported statement | Yes |
| Period lock that bars posting into a closed month | Yes |
| Departmental, branch or project dimensions on a journal line | Yes |
| Year-end closing entries posted for you | No |
Built and maintained Configurable by you, not maintained by us Not built
The ledger can now hold a complete set of books. What it cannot do is decide the judgements in them — which accruals to make, what to provide for, how a statutory plan is numbered — and the statutory accounts are still signed by your accountant. Bank reconciliation sits on the higher plans.
The chart of accounts, and the missing number column
Accounts here have a name, a description and a classification — asset, liability, equity, revenue or expense — which is what places them on the statements. They do not have an account code or a parent account. A few consequences follow directly, and they 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 classification, so an account you create sits where its classification puts it. Classify every account you add; an unclassified one with a balance is listed separately on the statements rather than dropped, and the month-end checklist flags it.
- The equity group carries owner’s equity, opening balance equity and retained earnings, so capital has a home and the opening journal has an account to post against.
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
The order matters. Documents first, so receivables and payables carry real ageing; the journal last, so it only carries what no document can. Have your accountant agree the journal before it is posted — once posted it cannot be edited or deleted, only reversed.
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
Load the trial balance in two halves — the open invoices and bills as documents so they age, then one opening journal for everything else, agreed with your accountant before it is posted. Pick a cut-off at the start of a period, keep the chart of accounts short, well-named and fully classified because there are no numbers to lean on, and leave the statutory sign-off with your accountant. That is the version 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?
Yes, in two halves. Open customer invoices and open supplier bills are entered as documents, so the receivables and payables positions carry real ageing. Everything else — bank, cash, fixed assets, loans, capital and retained earnings — is posted as one manual journal against the opening balance equity account, dated the day before your cut-off, with figures your accountant has agreed.
How do manual journals work?
A journal is saved as a draft until it balances and somebody posts it. You can switch on maker-checker approval with a threshold, so a journal above it waits for a second person — the author cannot approve their own — and can be rejected with a reason. A posted journal is never deleted; it is corrected by a reversal, which posts the mirror entries and keeps the original on the record. A month you have closed refuses any journal dated into it.
Why does the chart of accounts have no account numbers?
An account carries a name, a description and a classification — asset, liability, equity, revenue or expense — but no code or parent account, and statement grouping runs off the classification 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?
Yes. Once a month is closed, an entry dated into it is refused, and a system posting with no date of its own rolls forward to the first open day. A month-end close checklist runs the automatic checks first — unposted journals, the bank reconciled to month end, depreciation posted, pending petty cash, the trial balance, unclassified accounts, the previous month closed — alongside your own steps. Year-end closing entries are still your accountant’s to post.
