Initial Counterparty Debts: How to Enter, Modify, and Verify Balances After Deleting Statistics for Closed Periods

In everyday retail and wholesale trade, settlements with suppliers involving deferred payments, consignment sales, or credit limits granted to VIP customers require accurate accounting of the goods and cash balance. How should you enter opening balances when switching to automated accounting? Why might a supplier's outstanding balance change after database optimization? How can you verify settlements with a business partner when part of the transaction history has been deleted? And what should you do if the amount in the Settlement Card does not match the overall balance?

A business partner's opening debt — the recorded total monetary value of mutual obligations between a store and its business partner at the start of accounting in the software or at the point when historical data is removed. Torgsoft's Balance with Partners feature provides comprehensive monitoring of accounts receivable and payable, while the Deleting Statistics for Closed Periods feature allows you to remove outdated primary documents from the database without losing current financial balances.

1. Basic Concepts of Settlement Accounting in Torgsoft

To manage financial relationships, the software classifies all business partners by partnership type: Supplier, Customer, or Supplier-Customer.

• Balance with Partners (Payment -> Balance with Partners) — the main screen for analyzing overall balances. It displays total outstanding amounts separately for each currency in which transactions have been conducted.

• Settlement Card — a detailed report for a specific business partner showing the chronological history of all transactions (incoming and outgoing invoices, payment orders, cash orders, and return documents) and calculating the outstanding balance after each recorded transaction.

• Opening Debt — the starting point for calculating outstanding balances. It is entered manually when registering a new business partner or generated automatically by the software when deleting statistics from previous years to preserve the closing balance.

2. Step-by-Step Guide: How to Manually Enter or Change an Opening Debt

When introducing Torgsoft in an existing store, you need to enter outstanding debts to suppliers for goods received earlier, as well as amounts owed by customers.

1. Go to Settings -> Business Partner (or Settings -> Supplier).

2. Create a new business partner by clicking Add, or select an existing partner and click Edit.

3. In the business partner editing window, open the Opening Debts tab.

4. Click Add.

5. In the Opening Debt window, complete the following fields:

•   Debt Type: select «I Owe» (if the store owes money to the partner) or «Owed to Me» (if the business partner owes money to the store).

•   Amount: enter the exact outstanding amount.

•   Currency: select the currency used for the settlement.

•   Company: specify the legal entity or Sole Proprietorship if the software maintains separate accounting records for multiple businesses.

6. Click Save.

After saving, this amount will appear in Balance with Partners under the Debt Before Accounting Began column and will be included in the total outstanding balance.

If an error was made when entering the debt, return to the business partner's record (Settings -> Business Partner -> Opening Debts tab), select the relevant row, and click Edit to adjust the amount or currency, or Delete to remove the entry.

3. How Opening Debts Are Generated When Deleting Statistics for Closed Periods

Over years of operation, a Torgsoft database accumulates hundreds of thousands of sales receipts, invoices, and financial transactions. This increases the database size and slows down cost calculations and the generation of analytical reports.

To improve system performance, Torgsoft offers an optional paid feature, «Deleting Statistics for Closed Periods», which must be purchased separately. Once purchased, it is available under Analysis → Period → Delete Statistics for Closed Periods.

How the Software Preserves Balances When Historical Data Is Deleted:

1. Recording the Closing Balance. On the last day of the period being deleted (for example, December 31, 2023), the software calculates the exact closing debt for each business partner, currency, and company.

2. Automatically Creating an Opening Debt. Primary documents (goods receipts, sales, and cash orders) for the closed period are removed, but the software automatically generates a system Opening Debt entry dated the last day of the deleted period.

3. Preserving Inventory Balances. At the same time, the software creates an Incoming Invoice for Opening Inventory Balances as of the Last Day of the Deleted Period, recording the goods available in warehouses.

4. Result. The document history is cleared, the database becomes smaller, and the total outstanding balances in Balance with Partners on the first day of the new active period remain exactly the same as before deletion.

4. Answers to Common Business Questions and How to Resolve Discrepancies

Torgsoft technical support specialists regularly analyze issues reported by users after clearing historical data or adjusting settlements.

Causes and Explanations:

• Repeated or Out-of-Sequence Deletion. If the statistics deletion procedure was run several times for the same period, or if a later period was deleted before an earlier one, system-generated opening debts may be created again.

• Hidden Accounting Centers. In older software versions, documents associated with hidden (deactivated) accounting centers were not included in balance calculations. If a business partner had transactions at such a warehouse, these transactions may appear in the overall balance after updating the software and deleting statistics.

• Outdated Fields in the Partner Record. If the obsolete Initial Amount of My Debt field was filled in on the Additional tab of a business partner's record, earlier software versions could generate duplicate debts in all currencies when clearing historical periods.

• Transactions Around Midnight. If the statistics deletion procedure was performed shortly before midnight, the date of the automatically generated opening debt could, in rare cases, shift to the first day of the new month.

Causes:

• Payments Linked to Different Suppliers. An error occurs when a payment from a cash register or bank account is recorded for one supplier, while the incoming invoice is issued for another. This payment does not appear in the specific partner's Settlement Card, creating a discrepancy in the overall balance.

• Returns at a Different Price. When goods are returned to a supplier at a price different from the purchase price in the original incoming invoice (under the FIFO method), calculations in the specialized consignment inventory analysis may differ from the monetary balance.

Step-by-Step Verification Procedure:

1. Before Running the Procedure. Record and save the totals from Balance with Partners for each currency and partnership type (or export the list to Excel files).

2. After Running the Procedure. Open Balance with Partners and compare the new totals with the recorded figures.

3. Reviewing the Deletion Log. Go to Analysis -> Period, select the deleted period, and click Statistics Deletion Log. Review the Discrepancies by Business Partner tab.

4. Detailed Verification. If a discrepancy exists for a specific partner, open their Settlement Card. Make sure the generated Opening Debt dated the last day of the deleted period matches the closing balance recorded at the end of that day before the data was cleared.

5. Business Owner's Checklist Before Clearing Statistics

To ensure that database optimization runs without errors and settlements with business partners remain accurate, follow Torgsoft's technical procedure:

• Create a database backup (File -> Create Database Backup).

• Make sure there are no negative inventory balances in warehouses when closing periods.

• Record the outstanding balance totals for all currencies in Balance with Partners.

• Close all active software sessions on additional workstations and terminals.

• Run the statistics deletion procedure on the server computer using the Owner account.

• Compare the totals in Balance with Partners after the procedure is complete.

Following these rules ensures that financial records are preserved, outstanding obligations to suppliers and customers are reflected correctly, and the Torgsoft system continues to operate efficiently.