# Opening balances: migrating starting balances and the anchor period

> From the Zendrea manual for AI assistants, generated 2026-10-31 from the knowledge of Zendrea's built-in assistant. All topics: https://www.zendrea.ch/llms.txt; all of them in one file: https://www.zendrea.ch/llms-full.txt. Screen names are quoted in English, account numbers are those of the standard Swiss chart, and nothing here is tax or legal advice.

Opening balances seed the position that existed **BEFORE the anchor period begins** — for a company migrating into this app from another bookkeeping tool or from prior years kept elsewhere: cash, bank accounts, receivables, payables, VAT, share capital, retained earnings, etc. This app structures that around an **anchor fiscal period** under **Settings → Opening Balances**.

**A NEWLY FOUNDED company is different:** it starts from an empty balance sheet and enters NO opening balances. Its founding transactions — above all the initial capital pay-in to the bank account — are dated journal entries in the founding period, with their receipts: manual entry (others form), debit the bank account (e.g. 1020) / credit share capital 2800. Only route a user to this panel when prior books exist.

**Core model:**
- The user picks **one** anchor fiscal period (the "initial fiscal period") — this is the *only* period whose opening balances are entered manually.
- Every subsequent fiscal period's opening balances are **derived automatically** by carry-forward from the prior period's closing. The user never re-enters them.
- Changing the anchor to a different period triggers two effects: any manual openings on the old anchor are dropped, and carry-forward is rebuilt across all successor periods. The panel shows a confirmation modal warning about this.

**Per-account rows:** accounts are grouped into two sections — **Assets** and **Liabilities & equity** — and the user enters only an **amount** per account. There is **no debit/credit selector**: the side is derived automatically from the account type (assets post on the debit side, liabilities & equity on the credit side). For the rare balance that sits on the opposite of its natural side (e.g. a loss carried forward on 2970, or a contra-asset like accumulated depreciation), the user enters a **negative amount**. The panel shows running totals "Total assets", "Total liabilities & equity" and a "Difference (assets − liabilities & equity)" — a healthy opening is balanced (difference = 0); the user should usually book a balancing entry to 2970 (Profit/loss carry-forward) to close the gap.

**Foreign-currency bank accounts (multi-currency companies):** the row of a bank account assigned to a foreign currency takes the opening balance **in the account's currency** (the input is labeled with it) plus an indented **"Book value" field in the base currency** underneath — the value from the previous closing balance sheet. Left empty, the book value converts automatically at the official period-start rate (shown as the placeholder); a typed value is authoritative — a book migrated from another system should carry over that system's base-currency figure, which embeds last year's revaluation. Both figures flow through everything downstream: balance-sheet totals use the book value, the year-end currency valuation values the foreign amount (a properly entered opening never triggers the "mixed currency flows" warning), and carry-forward restates the pair into later periods automatically. These rows are always visible in the panel, even while empty.

**Account filtering:** the panel defaults to showing a curated list of ~20 commonly used balance-sheet accounts (1000, 1020, 1100, 1170, 1171, 1176, 1200, 1530, 2000, 2030, 2100, 2200, 2270, 2300, 2400, 2800, 2950, 2960, 2970, 2979). Toggles:
- **Hide empty accounts** — only shows accounts the user has entered a balance for.
- **Show all accounts** — expand beyond the default curated list to every chart-of-accounts entry.
- A free-text account filter is also available.

**Onboarding flow for a migrated company (prior books exist):**
1. Create the first fiscal period (header → Fiscal Period selector → New).
2. Go to Settings → Opening Balances, confirm the anchor is set to that period.
3. Enter each non-zero balance as a positive amount in its Assets or Liabilities & equity section (use a negative amount only for an opposite-side balance such as a loss or accumulated depreciation).
4. Use 2970 to balance any difference (typically the equity-side residual).
5. Save.

**Common questions:**
- "How do I book the initial share-capital payment of a newly founded company?" → NOT here. Manual journal entry (others form): debit bank 1020 / credit share capital 2800, dated on the pay-in date, receipt attached.
- "Where do I enter starting balances?" → Settings → Opening Balances (migrated books only).
- "Why can't I edit opening balances for last year?" → The anchor is on a different period. Either change the anchor (with the destructive confirmation) or accept that the period's openings come from carry-forward.
- "My opening trial balance is unbalanced — what do I do?" → Adjust 2970 to absorb the difference (it's the equity carry-forward); the "Difference (assets − liabilities & equity)" should be zero.
- "Will changing the anchor period delete my historical entries?" → No, only the manual openings on the previous anchor and the carry-forward computations are affected. Journal entries themselves are untouched.