Opening Balances posts one dated journal entry for the association’s financial position on the day you leave the prior system. That is the correct migration move - you do not import a balance-sheet PDF. You seed the general ledger, and the Balance Sheet report computes itself.
This article is the how-to for the tool. For which onboarding option to pick, see Financial Imports: Opening Ledger.
Where to find it
Financial Dashboard → Setup → Import Tools → Opening Balances → Begin Setup.
When to use it
You want a clean start (Option 2), or
You are importing only recent activity and need balances for everything before that cutoff (Option 3).
Skip cash / A/R / fixed assets here if another importer already populated those accounts. The tool warns about overlap. Typical leftovers: prepaid expenses, accounts payable, loans, reserve equity, and any leftover Undeposited Funds balance from the prior system.
How to post
Choose the cutover date — usually the day before you start operating in Vlge.
Enter the closing balance from the prior system for each Asset, Liability, and Equity account that still needs a starting number. Leave the rest at $0.
Suggested chips may appear from manual bank opening balances or the fixed-asset register — click to accept.
Review the journal entry. If your debits and credits do not balance, Vlge shows the difference and asks you where it belongs. See When your numbers don’t balance below. Nothing is plugged without your choice.
Post. The entry is tagged
opening_balancesso you can find it in the General Ledger.
When your numbers don’t balance
A balance sheet from your prior system almost always shows a difference between total assets and the liabilities + equity you have entered. Usually that difference is the current year’s net income, which the prior system computed but never posted to an equity account. Vlge gives you three ways to handle it:
Recognize year-to-date income from your imported actuals. If you have already imported a Budget vs Actuals or Income Statement file for this fiscal year, Vlge totals the imported revenue and expense through your cutover date and adds those balances to the opening entry. The Balance Sheet then shows that amount as Current Year Net Income instead of burying it in retained earnings. When the import explains the difference exactly, you’ll see an Exact match badge. This is the right choice whenever the imbalance is this year’s earnings.
Carry it forward in Opening Equity (3010). Treats the difference as retained earnings / fund balance from prior years. Use this when the income behind it belongs to earlier fiscal years, or you have no actuals import for this year. This is what the tool used to do automatically.
Carry it forward in a different Equity account. For example a reserve fund balance or a specific fund equity account. Pick the account from the list.
If the import doesn’t match exactly: Vlge still recognizes the imported income, then shows the remaining difference and carries it in the equity account you choose, labeled as an unreconciled residual on the journal line. It never adjusts your import or your entered balances to force a tie-out. If the residual surprises you, go back and check the entered balances before posting.
Only monthly (or quarterly) import rows count toward recognition. Annual totals cannot say how much belongs before the cutover and are ignored.
Opening Balances and imported actuals
Posting opening balances does not change how your reports read imported history.
Income Statement and Budget vs Actuals always prefer imported actuals for any month you imported. Revenue and expense lines carried in the opening entry are ignored for those months, so recognizing income from an import does not double-count it.
Balance Sheet compares the opening entry to your imports and warns you at the top of the report if they disagree — for example, if you posted opening balances before importing actuals, or imported a new file that changed year-to-date net income after posting.
Cash Flow notes any pre-cutover months that are covered by imports, since imported actuals carry no cash detail.
If you import Budget vs Actuals or an Income Statement after posting opening balances, the importer tells you whether the opening entry still agrees with the new numbers. If it does not, re-run Opening Balances (see Replacing the entry) and choose Recognize year-to-date income again to pick up the new totals.
Order of operations
Recommended sequence:
Import Bank Transactions (if you are bringing a recent cash window).
Import Unit Ledger History (if residents need recent charge/payment detail).
Import Fixed Assets if you have a register.
Import Budget vs Actuals or an Income Statement for the current fiscal year, if you want the opening entry to recognize year-to-date income rather than plug it to equity.
Post Opening Balances last for whatever is still missing.
Do not include amounts in Opening Balances that you also imported as transactions. That double-counts.
Undeposited Funds leftover
If the prior system still showed a balance in Undeposited Funds, enter that amount on the Undeposited Funds asset. Then use Mark Deposited when those checks actually hit the bank.
If that leftover is $0, you can leave the account at $0. Having the account on the chart is not the same as turning on the two-step check workflow. See Undeposited Funds (Manual Checks).
If you already imported bank history into checking, do not also run those old deposits through Undeposited Funds.
Replacing the entry
You can run the tool again. Vlge voids the existing opening entry (a reversal pair stays in the GL) and posts the new one. Confirm before replacing. Re-running is also how you refresh recognized income after a new actuals import - the previous entry is voided and the new one carries the updated year-to-date totals.
If bank-feed activity already exists on a cash account after the cutover date, posting opening cash on that account may be blocked so you do not overwrite live activity. Fix the cutover date or leave that cash line at $0 and let the feed / imports tell the story.
After you post
Do not edit the opening journal entry. Post an adjusting entry if a number was wrong.
Tie out A/R to unit ledgers and GL cash to the statement as of the cutover date.
Start formal Bank Reconciliation at that same date (or the first full statement after it) - not years of old months.