Entering historical accounts receivable and accounts payable

Historical receivables and payables can be entered as outstanding invoices from a prior year if you are in the first fiscal year of the account.  

Ensure that your Customer is set up under Customer in the Sales section on the navigation bar on the left.  If working on payables, it will be Suppliers in the Purchases section.

To set a customer's opening balance, create a "Receivable charge" transaction dated before the start of the business's first fiscal year in Accounting.

Go to Sales, then Transaction and Receivable charge

Alternatively, Go to Sales and click Receivables and New receivable charge

Fill out the customer information. Choose the transaction date to be the last day of the previous fiscal year. In our example below, our current year is 2025, we will be using December 31, 2024 as our transaction date to bring in the amount this customer John Smith owed us.

Click on Continue on the popup warning message to confirm that the date used is correct and that the transaction is to reflect an opening balance.

Save your transaction and you are done. Historical transactions can be edited and reversed in the first fiscal year following the same rules that would apply for a regular charge transaction.

You can do the same to record any payable opening balances, by using the Purchases menu and then Payable charge.

Last updated on February 2, 2026 by FCC AgExpert