Before you can get to your daily work, you must enter master information, and transaction information that will bring your system to agree with the current state of your accounting. The following describes the steps to achieve this if you will be manually entering your information. Alternatively, if you are currently using another software system that contains this information, you may contact Appgen Professional Services to automatically convert your current data into the MyBooks database.

Sales & Customers Enter each of your active customers by selecting Set Up Customers on the Sales & Customers (Service-based Business interface) or Sales Orders (Inventory-based Business interface) tab. The more information you enter for each customer, the better the system will serve you. However, to get started you only have to enter the information that the program requires. Next, you need to bring each customer’s account to the current state by entering their opening balances. It is recommended that you enter each open invoice with the amount that is currently due. If the volume of invoices is large and you feel that such detail is not necessary to get started, you can simply enter one invoice (or credit memo), for each customer, that reflects their entire current balance. To enter these records, select Enter Invoices on the Sales & Customers (Service-based Business interface) or Sales Orders (Inventory-based Business interface) tab, and then post them (Journal & Post) after verifying the correctness of the data you entered by printing the edit list, and making corrections as necessary. If you chose to use the Service-based Business interface because your business is based primarily on the sales of services, you can set up all the different types of services, and even products, now. While this is not really a step required before you can start invoicing, it would be more efficient and convenient to have the services and products set up first. You enter one record for each type of service and product by selecting Set Up Products & Services on the Sales & Customers tab.

Vendors & Purchases Enter each of your active vendors by selecting Set Up Vendors on the Vendors & Purchases (Service-based Business interface) or Pay Bills (Inventory-based Business interface) tab. The more information you enter for each vendor, the better the system will serve you. However, to get started you only have to enter the information that the program requires. Next, you need to bring each vendor’s account to the current state by entering their opening balances. Enter each open invoice with the amount that is currently due. To enter these records, select Enter Vendor Invoices on the Vendors & Purchases (Service-based Business interface) or Pay Bills (Inventory-based Business interface) tab, and then post them (Journal & Post) after verifying the correctness of the data you entered by printing the edit list, and making corrections as necessary.

Employees & Payroll To use the Payroll system, you must use the Set Up Employees function on the Payroll tab to set up one record for each of your employees. You must also set up any considerations for state and local taxes (the federal tables have been created for you). It is highly recommended that you thouroughly read the Payroll Help document and carefully address all issues of employee withholdings, deductions, and earnings before attempting to use the Payroll system.

Bank Accounts You have already entered your bank accounts. Now you need to enter their opening balances. Select Enter Miscellaneous Transactions on the Bank Accounts tab. Then enter all currently uncleared transactions for each account, using the types CR (Credit Adjustment) and DR (Debit Adjustment) as appropriate. The total of the transactions in each account should equal the account's current balance.

Inventory If you chose to use the Inventory-based Business interface because your business is based primarily on the sales of items that you stock in inventory, you need to initialize your inventory system now. Enter all your active inventory items by selecting Set Up Inventory Items on the Inventory tab. Initialize the current stock levels of your inventory by selecting Receive Inventory Items on the Inventory tab and entering one record for each item that reflects its current quantity on hand.

Trial Balance The final step is to initialize your general ledger Trial Balance. This is a step you may prefer to have your accountant do since it may be necessary to make certain esoteric decisions about the balance sheet portion. To enter the beginning balances in your Trial Balance, select Make Journal Entries on the Accountant menu. If you have a current Trial Balance from a system in use, just use that to make one journal entry for the entire Trial Balance. Then, after reviewing the edit list and making necessary corrections, run the Journal & Post function on the same menu.

Important Note: Sales, purchase, payroll, inventory, and bank transactions are pulled into the Trial Balance by selecting the Integrate Distribution options on the Accountant menu, and then posting them as normal journal entries. Since you have entered transactions into your sales and purchases to initialize your customer and vendor accounts, you must ensure that you don’t post them into your Trial Balance. That would change and invalidate the opening balances you just set up. To do so, simply run the Integrate Distribution options on the Accountant’s Page and then void the resulting journal transactions using the Void Transaction option of the Make Journal Entries function.