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Troubleshooting Cash Totals: Verifying Opening Balances

Opening balances make sure Digits starts with the right cash number so your reports and dashboards stay accurate.

What an Opening Balance Is

In Digits, an Opening Balance is the amount in your bank account when Digits first starts tracking your data.

That number becomes the starting point for:

  • Total Cash on your Dashboard

  • Other cash and balance-related reports

If the opening balance is wrong, your cash metrics and history can look off.

How Digits Gets Your Opening Balance

Digits will try to pull your opening balance automatically in a few ways.

1. From QuickBooks Online (QBO)

If you connected your data from QuickBooks Online, Digits brings in the opening balance from QBO automatically.

  • You’ll see this logged as “imported from QuickBooks” in the Activity Log.

2. From the Bank (via Plaid)

If you connected your bank directly:

  • Digits uses Plaid to pull up to 2 years of transactions.

  • If your account activity falls within that window, Digits uses those transactions to calculate the balance on the date you connected.

3. When No Data Is Available

If Digits can’t see far enough back—usually because the account is older than what Plaid can provide—it does its best to estimate:

  • Digits calculates an opening balance based on the first transaction it can see.

  • It books that as a journal entry labeled “Digits generated opening balance.”

When You Might Need to Adjust the Opening Balance

You may need to update the opening balance if:

  • Your Total Cash on the Dashboard doesn’t look right

  • Older transactions are missing

  • You don’t see any opening balance entry in the Ledger

If something feels off, it’s a good idea to check the opening balance against your bank statement.

How to Adjust the Opening Balance

You can either edit the existing entry or create a new one.

Option A: Edit the Existing Entry

  1. Go to Accounting → Ledger → All Transactions.

  2. Find the Opening Balance entry (it may be a Journal Entry or Pay In).

  3. Open the entry and change the amount as needed.

  4. Click Save & Close.

Option B: Create a New Entry

  1. Go to Ledger → All Transactions.

  2. Click New Transaction → Journal Entry.

  3. Enter the correct opening balance amount and choose the right accounts.

  4. Click Save & Close.

See: Journal Entries in Digits

Not sure what the right amount is? Look at your bank statement for the date when Digits started tracking the account.

Backfilling Older Transactions (Optional)

If you have a CSV file of older transactions, you can import them to improve accuracy:

  1. Go to Ledger → All Transactions.

  2. Click the dropdown next to New Transaction → Import Bank Transactions.

  3. Upload your CSV file and confirm the field mappings.

  4. Click Next to finish the import.

✨ Digits will add this history and make your cash metrics and timelines more accurate.

Need help? If your opening balance still doesn’t look right, check in with your accountant or email [email protected]—we’ll help you get it sorted.