We recommend bringing in opening balances for the last period of a financial year, ideally the one before last. Then you can import the actuals for each month since and start with prior year comparisons immediately.
For example, if your last financial year ended in December 2025, import the opening balances for December 2024 and then each month's data from then on.
How to structure your import
Decide on the type of values to import
Our default import type for Actuals is monthly movements
If you are bringing data from a trial balance, it's generally easier to bring in Closing Balances using Debit/Credit amounts with debits positive and credits negative.
If you are importing opening balances by business unit it, bring in the full year movements by business unit for the Profit & Loss accounts and then the Balance Sheet closing balances against one Admin or Overhead department.
Confirm that you have imported the Chart of Accounts first, and Business Units if you are using those.
Export a template first
Navigate to Settings, Organisation Settings, Organisation Sync, Import Data
Select Actual Amounts
Choose the option to Export a Template
This will take you to the Budget Tools, Export options as we use the same template for budgets.
Choose either Organisation or use the dropdown to select your business units
Set the date range you want for your opening balances. You can edit this in the template.
Ensure you export empty rows as they will all be empty at this stage
Tip 💡The export won't include your Retained Earnings or Current Earnings accounts as we normally calculate them. For the opening balance you will need the Retained Earnings so insert that into your spreadsheet. Confirm you are using the account nominated in Cashflow Settings, Bank & Equity. Note that the account name is case-sensitive.
Populate the template with your existing numbers
Use positive numbers for debit values, negative for credits
Import the new balances
Settings, Organisation Settings, Organisation Sync, Import Data
Select Actual Amounts and browse for your import file
On the Match Fields screen take care with the selection
Select the options to import closing balance amounts and credit/debit amounts
Check that the right month is selected.
We will verify the data and import it
Navigate to Budgets & Cashflow, Budgets & Actuals and select Actuals for your organisation. Choose the right date range and confirm that your balances are in with no discrepancy in the top row.
Common Issues
Discrepancy in the Actuals column
This implies that the debits and credits don't balance
Compare a trial balance report from Calxa with the one from your accounting system to find the difference
If you are importing Debits/Credits, sum your values in a row below the rows you are importing, after at least one blank line to check that is zero. The import stops at the first blank line