Help › Bookkeeping
Manage bank accounts and opening balances
Your bank and credit-card accounts are first-class in TALISK_HQ, each with an opening balance:
- Go to Ledger › Banking › Accounts.
- Click Add bank account and set the Name, Type (Bank, Credit card, or Prepaid balance), the Currency, the opening balance (labelled Balance owed at opening for a card), and the Opening date.
- For a bank or card, use Post opening balance to ledger to record that starting balance as a journal entry.
The opening balance and opening date are only shown where they can actually be recorded: on a Bank or Credit card account, in a book that has not already entered opening/conversion balances. In the two cases where a per-account opening can't be posted the fields are left off the form rather than taking a figure that would never reach your books, and the form says where the balance comes from instead:
- a Prepaid balance account, whose balance builds from your opening/conversion entry and from the top-up transactions you categorize;
- any account in a book that already has opening/conversion balances, which already include every account's opening.
Every bank and credit-card account gets its own ledger account, created for you, so there is nothing to choose. That is what lets the account show as its own line on the balance sheet and reconcile against its own statement. The row shows which ledger account it uses. A Prepaid balance is the exception: you pick the balance account it posts to, because it is standing in for an account someone else holds.
The Currency defaults to your book's currency. For a bank or credit-card account you can instead pick a supported foreign currency, and the account then holds its money in that currency and reconciles in it, while your books record the home-currency value at each transaction's date. Currency can't be changed once the account exists, so pick it when you add the account. See Foreign-currency bank and card accounts for how the numbers flow.
Accounts are also created automatically the first time you import a statement, in the statement's currency when that's supported. They are offered from your trial balance too, when you use Import from accountant documents: rows that look like bank or card accounts can become accounts here in one step, each keeping the ledger account your accountant already gave it. An account created that way starts without an opening balance of its own: the figure arrives when you post your opening balances, so nothing is counted twice. When a statement disagrees with the opening balance you typed, an Apply hint lets you take the statement's figure.
If your book was set up by entering full opening/conversion balances, those already include each account's opening: change them there rather than posting per account here, or the balance counts twice. TALISK_HQ doesn't offer you the choice: the opening fields are absent from the add and edit forms in that book, and a note above the table links straight to Opening balances.
The Opening balance column still shows each account's figure in that book. Where the account carries its own copy, that copy is shown. Where it doesn't, TALISK_HQ reads the opening straight off your opening/conversion balances and marks the figure From your opening/conversion balances. A blank there means only that no opening was recorded for that account, never that the figure was lost. Two cases show nothing on purpose: an account whose ledger account is shared with other accounts, because the one opening can't be split between them; and a foreign-currency account, where the figure shown is your book's currency rather than the account's, and the row says which. If a copy disagrees with your opening/conversion balances, the row shows both and tells you the ledger is the one that counts.
Balance now is what the account holds today, taken from your ledger. Because each account has its own ledger account, the figure is that account's alone. Accounts set up before this changed can still share one Cash account between them; where that happens the row says the balance is the combined one, and the reconciliation screen says the same rather than showing a difference that could never close.
Other balances
Below the accounts is an Other balances section: money your books track that has no bank feed, so there is nothing to reconcile it against. A GIC, a customs or import account, a clearing balance carried over from your accountant. These are ordinary ledger accounts, so their balance is worked out from your entries rather than typed in, and View activity opens the entries behind it.
They are listed here because they were otherwise only visible under Accounting, which made money set up during onboarding look like it had vanished. If one of them should really be reconciled, Track as an account adds it above as a Prepaid balance on the same ledger account: that is how a customs or third-party balance becomes a full account you can match transactions against. It carries no opening balance of its own: whatever the ledger account already holds is its balance, and it moves as you categorize top-ups and charges. Everything is listed, including an account you have just set up and not used yet, and one you have emptied. A goods-in-transit account you cleared when a container landed is still where the next shipment goes. An account you have archived stays listed too while it holds a balance or has moved this financial year, so money left behind in a retired account can't quietly disappear. The only thing left off is an archived account that is empty and hasn't moved this year.
An archived account is shown for reference only: reactivate it in the chart of accounts before you can move money in or out of it.
Move balance
Move balance shifts money from one account to another and writes the bookkeeping entry for you. Use it when stock you paid for in advance arrives and moves from goods-in-transit into inventory, when you count stock and move the cost of what you sold into cost of goods sold, or to tidy a leftover balance your accountant carried over.
It sits on each Other balances row here, and on every account in Ledger › Accounting › Chart of accounts, including TALISK_HQ's own accounts such as Inventory. Those can't be renamed or switched off, but moving a balance is an ordinary bookkeeping entry, so it is always available. Inventory isn't a bank account, so look for it in the chart of accounts, not here.
Pick the account to move to, check the amount, set the date, and TALISK_HQ shows what each account will be worth before you commit. You do not enter debits and credits: TALISK_HQ works out which way round the entry goes from where the money currently sits, so it cannot be recorded backwards.
The amount starts as the whole balance but you can change it. Moving part of a balance is normal: if one shipment of several arrives, move just that shipment's value and the rest stays where it is, ready for next time. The preview tells you how much is left behind.
Two things it won't do. It refuses accounts that TALISK_HQ works out from your invoices, bills and payments (Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Undeposited Funds), because moving those by hand would put them out of step with the documents behind them; fix the documents instead. And it refuses a date inside a locked period.