I am seeing a value for opening balance adjustments in my Balance Sheet. How do I remove this?

Zoho Books is a double-entry bookkeeping system. Therefore, every entry to an account will have a corresponding and opposite entry to a different account.

When transactions are created in Zoho Books, the journal entries will be automatically created in this manner. Similarly, when you enter the Opening Balances for accounts manually, the system has to ensure that the Debit and Credit values are equal. If there is a difference found between the values, a corresponding entry will be posted to the Opening Balance Adjustments account automatically to balance them.

Now, if there is a difference between the opening balance adjustments value shown in Opening Balances section under Settings and the Balance Sheet, it could be due to the following reasons:

• The value of the opening balance adjustments shown on the opening balance page reflects the variance between the credit and debit amounts entered for each account on the opening balance page.
• The Balance Sheet report, on the other hand, will show the above value as well as the transactions recorded. Here, transactions created on or before the Migration date will also be considered as opening balances for the corresponding accounts.

To rectify, here’s what you can do:

• If transactions are causing the opening balance adjustments value, you can change the transaction’s date to a date after the migration date or to a previous date. This will modify the opening balance adjustments value.

• If the adjustment is occurring only because of the values you have entered in the opening balances screen, this is because of the double entry book keeping. Make sure that you have added all the debit and credits properly. In order to remove the value, move the balance from the Opening Balance Adjustments account to a different account using a Manual Journal.