I have just taken on a limited company client who has been doing their own books for nearly four years.
I have moved them across from Kashflow to Sage line 50.
The accounts on Kashflow are in such a mess (bank rec not done for four years!) that I have decided not to import any of the balances as they are quite clearly not correct. So I have been in touch with their accountant and suggested he do his magic as he has been doing up until year end Feb 28th 2014 and I will start posting to sage from 1st March 2014. Once he has completed 13/14 he can send me a journal for the opening balances etc. In the meantime I have bank statements from 1st March so I want to enter the opening balances for the banks and I wasn't sure where the other side of the journal should be posted to? I am guessing just post to suspense until the accountant sends the journal across? I will post any supplier payments to a nominal code that I have created close to the creditors control account as this will eventually create the year end creditors balance but is there anything else I should be thinking about when transferring over from one system to another?
Just a quick comment on the Bank Statement balance as at 1 March 2014.
Watch out for the difference between the Statement Balance and the Book Balance. Obviously you want to record the Book Balance to agree with the balance the accountant will send you. The Statement Balance should represent the reconciled part of the Book Balance, but there may also be outstanding lodgements and outstanding payments to record in addition to the Statement Balance. If these are recorded individually, it simplifies future Bank reconciliations.
You can post all these entries to suspense, as you suggested, and, when you get the TB from the accountant, you can post the other side of all the other balances to suspense too, bringing the suspense balance back to zero.
I'm not sure I follow what you're intending to do regarding supplier payments or how you intend to deal with the debit balance that will build up in your new nominal code. There are well documented procedures for recording opening Debtors and Creditors ledger balances - I'd stick to those.
