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Of all the accounting entries that exist in the general ledger the opening seat is the first and the most important of all. They are the records that are collected at the beginning of an exercise on the economic and financial situation of a company at that specific moment. Without the opening entry, it would not be feasible to start periods in the accounting, in the general ledger or in any other economic accounting record of the company.
The opening seat starts the entire accounting cycle of a company cuya duración es de un año. A partir de ella se registra cada una de las operaciones económicas que desarrollará el negocio durante este período. En la mayoría de las compañías suelen coincidir con el año calendario, comenzando el 1 de enero y finalizando el 31 de diciembre. En él se cobrará cada carga o activo, es decir, ingresos y gastos. Dada esta situación, la entrada de apertura no puede contener gastos ni ingresos. En cierto modo, la entrada de apertura es la que inicia el libro mayor debido a que una vez que se realiza la entrada, los movimientos deben transferirse al libro. Para saber cómo establecerlo e iniciarlo, continúa leyendo este post que te hemos dedicado.
Constitution of the first initial seat
The initial entry would be the first opening entry that it is done when starting a business, that is, when creating / being born a new business. There are two situations in which an opening entry must be made, and this would be the first case.
In this new first entry, all the contributions made by the partners that constitute it will be reflected. They include all assets and can be both economic and real estate, land, furniture. All this part The share capital is indicated in the "must" section and then in "have"., since the statutes of the company have been made.
All expenses derived from the incorporation of the company, such as taxes, are recorded as equity after the initial opening entry is constituted. After these entries, you can continue with all the expenses derived from the activity, such as invoices, salaries, taxes, as well as the income from the sales or services that are offered.

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After the calendar year and reaching the end of the accounting cycle, the closing entry must be made. Accounts must be entered into it to leave them in a zero balance. Therefore, the new opening entry can be started for the next fiscal year, transferring the old values to the new one. Following the same trend, highlighting the assets in the "debit" accounts and the liabilities in the "credit" accounts.
The opening entry of an already defined company.
The first accounting entry made for each fiscal year. is the opening seat. It comes after the closing entry, which is the last accounting entry made at the end of the year.
The opening entry is made following the same method as in the previous case, but starting from an already created company. The data that may be available may vary from case to case, but it is usually for three cases. The first is by transferring the values from the closing input to the opening input. In the second case with the balance of the previous year or in a third case even when there is no data.
Opening seat example
We are going to make a hypothetical example of the opening entry of a company that we will call «finance 521 SL». After completing the closing entry of the last fiscal year, we proceed to start the opening entry for the new accounting cycle. In the balance we had at the end of the year we can have, as an example, the following items:
- Active: Machinery 3,000 euros. Money 500 euros. Customers 600 euros. Stock 800 euros.
- Passive: Capital 1,000 euros. Reservations of 400 euros. Debts of 800 euros.
All parts of the assets would be listed first in the "must" section, then under "assets", the previously described liabilities would continue to be listed in descending order (as follows).
As previously mentioned, the opening entry can be started for the first time if the company has just been incorporated. In this circumstance, they are generally very simple data since there is no initial balance and they are generally cash or banks (due to the contributions made by the different partners). We can also find ourselves in the case of an existing company with an accounting program. In this circumstance, the program itself will be automated and at the close of the previous cycle the opening input will begin. In the event that someone else keeps this accounting, there is more work and it is important to have all the accounts closed and then start the opening entry.
En la práctica, no habrá un desglose generalizado como «maquinaria» o «clientes», como era la idea de simplificar. Regularmente habrá un archivo para cada client, así como un desglose de los diferentes activos con los que cuenta la compañía.