Historical Balance Account 3-9999

The standard accounting principle for a Balance Sheet is that Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity. AccountEdge wants to guarantee that when you initially set up your company file and enter your opening account balances (from an existing Balance Sheet and Income Statement as of your conversion date) that what you have entered for asset accounts equals what you have entered for liability and equity accounts. The account will balance your Chart of Accounts when the balance sheet does not balance.

The software will calculate any differences between these two totals and enter that amount in this account. When entering opening balances this is called the “Amount Left to be Allocated”. After you have entered all opening balances for balance sheet and income and expense accounts this figure should be zero. If not, you will need to investigate the difference.

Balance in Historical Balance Account (3-9999)

The only reason that there is a balance is this account is that when you entered your account opening balances the total of your asset accounts did NOT equal the total of your liability and equity accounts.

The opening balances were incomplete or incorrectly entered.

• Look at the Balance Sheet report and Income Statement (as of your conversion date) that you used to enter the data. Is everything entered correctly? Was everything entered as positive amounts, except those figures in brackets, such as depreciation.
• Are you using the Inventory module? Did you enter an opening balance for the inventory asset account or did you leave that balance at zero? The amount in your 3-9999 account should reflect the value of your inventory. When you enter your opening counts for your inventory items the value in 3-9999 will be transferred to the inventory asset account and then the historical balancing account should be zero. If not, then either your opening inventory accounts balances were incorrect or there are other incorrect entries in your balance sheet.
• Does the opening Accounts Receivable balance total the amounts entered as Historical Sales?
• Does the opening Accounts Payable balance total the amounts entered as Historical Purchases?
• Are you using the Multi-currency feature? Were exchange account balances entered correctly?
• Were there any Unrealized Gains or Losses not entered?