Opening Balances

Hi there,

I am new to Zoho Books and am just learning how to use it. I have a problem around opening balances and reconciliations.

I have input the opening balances into my bank accounts manually, however, when I click on confirm, I get the following message:

" The total debits and credits differ by $2961.3. You can go back and adjust the balances to remove the difference, or you can continue and the difference will be transferred to the Opening Balance Adjustment account".

I don’t understand what this means or what it is asking me to do. I have no other amounts to go in any other of my accounts. What is an Opening Balance Adjustment account? How can my amounts be "different"? Different to what?

When I click on continue, Zoho debits this amount from my bank accounts which ultimately shows that my bank balances are zero instead of the opening balance I actually entered. The result is, when I go to do a bank reconciliation, all of my transactions are added on to an initial zero balance instead of the actual opening balance. This means that they never reconcile, as Zoho has recorded my initial balance as a debit instead of a credit.

I don’t understand why this is so, or how to fix it – can you please help?

Thank you,

Karen.