How to Get a Starting Balance in Bookkeeping
- 1). Locate your firm's most recent bank statements, debit card receipts and the business account check register. Review the bank statement to see if all of the checks and withdrawals have posted to the account. List withdrawals that have yet to clear the bank.
- 2). Gather all of the sales receipts for your business and receipts for any other type of income that the firm receives. Review the bank account statement to ensure that all of your deposits have been credited to the bank account. Keep a list of sums that have yet to clear into the bank. List sums that you kept on hand as petty cash.
- 3). Count your cash. You must physically count every bill and coin because you need to know precisely how much money you have. Otherwise, a dollar bill or a few coins could throw your books out of balance.
- 4). Buy a bookkeeping journal or an accounting software program. Both should have a credits and a debits column. Add your total cash reserves, your current bank account balance and your outstanding deposits to determine your total credits. Add the sum total of your outstanding checks to determine the total debits. Subtract the total debits from the total credits to determine your starting balance.
- 5). Start a fresh page in your journal. Write the date on it and the starting balance. At the end of each day, calculate the ending balance. The ending balance should always equal the beginning balance plus all of the credits but minus all of the debits.
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