Opening vouchers: starting from where you already areالقيود الافتتاحية: البدء من حيث أنت فعلًا

No company starts from nothing. On the day you begin using Libra you already have money in the cash box, money in the bank, clients who owe you, suppliers you owe, and equipment you bought years ago. An opening voucher is how all of that gets in.

It is the same voucher you already know - a date, a description, and lines that say which accounts moved - so read Journal vouchers and How to create a journal voucher first. This guide only covers what is different.

1. Where they live

Open Opening Vouchers from the left menu. The screen opens on the list of the opening vouchers already recorded, and the columns are the same ones the journal voucher list uses.

2. Four things that are not the same as a journal voucher

The date is the one to understand. An opening balance belongs to the moment before trading starts, so every opening voucher carries the same date - the company's opening date. Libra fills it in and keeps it there: the calendar beside the field still opens, but picking another day leaves the date as it was. The same holds when you edit or copy an opening voucher.

3. What goes into one

One line for every account that already carries a balance on the day you start:

• what is in the cash box and in each bank account,
• what each client still owes you, and what you still owe each supplier - one line per party, with the party chosen in PID,
• stock on hand, and equipment and vehicles you already own,
• loans outstanding,
• and finally the capital and accumulated profit that make the whole thing balance.

That last one is not an afterthought. The difference between everything you own and everything you owe is the owners' stake, so it is what the balancing line records.

4. It still has to balance

The bar under the grid behaves exactly as it does on a journal voucher: a total debit, a total credit and a Balance, on a separate row for each of the company's two currencies, and both must read 0.000 before Libra will save.

The example above is the simplest possible opening voucher - 5,000,000 LBP sitting in the cash box on 1 January, against the capital that paid for it. A real one has many more lines, but it foots to zero the same way.

5. Save

Press F12.

Two things to notice:

• The header greys out. An opening voucher, once saved, is a record of a decision already made.
• Current balance appears at the bottom left. It is the running balance of the account on the line you are standing on - a quick check that the figure you just entered produced the balance you expected.

6. Afterwards

An opening voucher is not a special case for anything downstream. It reaches the ledger like every other entry, and from that moment the trial balance, the statement of account and every report start from the figures you gave them.

Which is why it is worth getting right the first time. If an opening figure is wrong, every statement that account ever prints is wrong by the same amount.

7. If something is wrong

• The date is not the day you expected. It is the company's opening date, set when the company was created (see How to set up a company). On a new company, before any voucher or invoice has been saved, it can still be changed in Company properties, under Opening voucher date - then close Libra and log in again before entering opening vouchers. After that the field is locked: contact Libra Support.
• Totals will not balance. You are almost certainly missing the capital line - the one that absorbs the difference between what the company owns and what it owes.
• The party does not appear in PID. They have no auxiliary record yet - see How to create a client or How to create a supplier.
• You need to correct one after saving. Do not delete history. Ask your accountant whether the right answer is an adjusting journal voucher instead.