Your business has been trading for a while now, but you've decided you want to switch your record-keeping from another system to FreeAgent. (Great choice!).
When you set up your new account to keep your business books using FreeAgent, one date you need to put in is what we call the "FreeAgent start date".
Go to Settings at the top right of the screen, then click Accounting Dates. It's the third date on the list there.
This is the date as from which your books on FreeAgent will start - which isn't necessarily going to be today's date. You might decide, today, to start using FreeAgent as from an earlier date.
Let's say today's date is 30th November. You've decided to start keeping your books on FreeAgent as of 1st October. So any invoices you issue dated on or after 1st October will be created through FreeAgent. And you'll put all the opening balances on to FreeAgent as they were at the start of the day on 1st October.
If your business has only been trading for a couple of months or so, you might decide that you'd prefer to start your record-keeping afresh and put all its transactions into FreeAgent, going right back to the business start date.
But if you decide not to start afresh, then your company start date, the day your business began trading, or for a limited company the date on its certificate of incorporation from Companies House, will be earlier than your FreeAgent start date.
You'll need to put in all your business's opening balances as at the FreeAgent start date.
Don't put in any transactions dated before the FreeAgent start date as this can cause anomalies. This includes out-of-pocket expenses and capital assets.
Assets should be handled differently depending on whether they were bought before the company start date, or between that date and the FreeAgent start date.
Don't, even in this scenario, date any entries before the company start date, because your company couldn't have had any transactions before it existed. Treat it like this.
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