Opening balances in Nexto — bring your books in and lock

This is the most important part of the setup. If you have been working with another set of books until now — a spreadsheet, an old program, or paper — you need to bring today's balances into Nexto, and there is exactly one right way to do it. After this part your balances are inside the software and the system is live.

What you will learn

• The three steps of a correct opening: enter, check, lock
• How to enter a row, and how to upload hundreds of rows from a template
• Why each currency needs its own row
• Why total debit and total credit don't match, and what capital has to do with it
• What the preview shows you before you post
• What the final lock does and why it asks you to type a word by hand

Step by step

The three steps

One: you enter today's balance for every customer, every till and every bank. Two: you check in the preview that it balances — total debit must equal total credit. Three: you save and lock it, and from then on you work with ordinary documents. The opening is a document too, and it isn't quietly edited afterwards.

The opening page

The opening page has the row form at the top and the list of the rows you've entered below. Note this: the page is only open while the system is in opening mode. Once you lock it, the page closes — and that is deliberate.

Entering a row

Enter the first row. The account: Michael Carter. The currency: Canadian dollars. The amount: a hundred and twenty five thousand. Then its nature — does this customer owe us, or do we owe them? Michael Carter owes us, so: debit. Write the description and save, and the row drops into the list.

It's worth writing something like «balance from the previous books» in the description; in six months you'll know where this row came from.

Uploading many rows at once

If you have hundreds of customers, don't type them in. Download the ready spreadsheet template, fill it in and upload it back: account name, currency, debit or credit — that's all. The upload doesn't save straight away; you see every row first, then approve.

Enter all your customers, your till and your bank accounts the same way. If a customer has a balance in more than one currency, write a separate row for each currency, because every currency has its own ledger.

The difference goes to capital

When you've entered all the rows, the total debit and the total credit may not be equal. That's normal — the difference is in fact your capital. Nexto sees this itself and writes the difference to the capital account, so the books balance on their own.

Check the preview, then post

Before you save, look at the preview. Nexto shows you the document it's about to create exactly as it will be: which account will be debited, which credited, and how big the difference is. If something is wrong, this is the place to fix it. If everything is right, post them all together and the opening document is created. From this moment your balances are inside Nexto.

The final lock

When you press the lock button, opening mode closes and the system goes live. So that it can't be pressed by accident, you're asked to type the confirmation word by hand. After locking, the opening page closes; if a correction is ever needed you make it with a correction document, leaving a trail — see part three.

Look at the general ledger after the lock and you'll see all your balances in place: customers, the till, the banks and capital. From this point on everything runs through ordinary documents.

Tips

• Before you lock, compare a few of your biggest customers' balances against your old books. Those five minutes save you months of confusion later.
• One row per currency per account — never merge two currencies into one row.
• The difference posted to capital is correct; don't try to make the two totals match by hand.
• The in-app page help (the ? icon at the top of the page) has more detail on the template columns and the upload preview.

FAQ

My total debit and total credit don't match — what did I do wrong?

Probably nothing. The difference between the two totals is your capital, and Nexto writes it to the capital account itself so the opening document balances. You can see the exact amount in the preview before you post.

I have hundreds of customers — do I have to type each one?

No. Download the spreadsheet template, fill in account name, currency, amount and whether it's debit or credit, and upload it back. Nothing is saved until you have looked through every row in the preview and approved it.

What happens when I lock the opening?

Opening mode closes, the opening page disappears from the menu and the system goes live. Because it is irreversible, you are asked to type a confirmation word by hand rather than just clicking a button.

I locked the opening and then found a wrong balance — can I fix it?

Yes, but not by reopening the opening page. You post a correction document, exactly as with any other voucher, so the change is visible and traceable. The next part moves on to customers and accounts, where you will manage those files day to day.