Bring over past transactions

With Tools › [Starting balances](/import/opening) set to With past transactions too, TallyPip brings in every transaction from your old app's Journal report. Each one keeps its date, so profit and loss month by month, comparisons and this year's business tax summary all work as if you'd used TallyPip all along. They're marked Brought over in your reports.

1. Pick the dates

• From: where the history starts, usually the start of this year (or last year). Your opening balances are as of the day before: for January 1, use December 31.
• To (the last day you're bringing over): usually the end of last month. Your books in TallyPip start the day after; unpaid invoices and bills are as of this day.

2. Export the Journal report

In your old app, run the Journal report (sometimes called General journal or Transaction detail) for those dates and export it (to Excel or CSV). It lists every transaction with its lines. TallyPip needs the Date, Account, and Debit and Credit (or one Amount column). It also uses, when there:

• Transaction type, No. and Name: shown as the transaction's description (“Invoice 1043 · Rivera Renovations”), and needed to make your past invoices and bills (step 4).
• Memo / description: kept on each line.
• Cleared (often “Clr”, with R or C): bank and card lines without it are left open for your first reconciliation in TallyPip, like checks that hadn't cleared yet.
• Class and Location: each line's class and the transaction's location (see Classes and locations); any not in TallyPip yet are added, sub-classes (“Retail:Online”) under their class.

Files up to 25 MB and 60,000 lines work. A bigger history? Export it in parts (for example one file per half year) and bring them in oldest first.

Some apps print a heading row before each transaction (its number on a row of its own). TallyPip uses those rows to tell where each transaction starts, so an invoice whose lines add up to zero partway (cost of goods sold and inventory at the end) still comes in as one.

3. Bring it in

1. 1Do steps 1 and 3 of Starting balances first: your chart of accounts, then the opening balances as of the day before the history starts. With past transactions, receivables and payables stay in the balances.
2. 2In Past transactions, choose the Journal file. Check Match the columns.
3. 3Check Last day you're bringing over.
4. 4Look at the preview: how many transactions, the dates they cover, and any problems. Every transaction must balance and every account must be in your chart; until then the import waits, so nothing is left half-done.
5. 5Press Import transactions. Large files go in a few hundred at a time; keep the page open until it says they're in.
6. 6Then make your past invoices and bills (step 4 below), and your past expenses, receipts, deposits and transfers (step 5).

4. Make your past invoices and bills

Your past invoices, bills, customer payments, bill payments, credit memos and vendor credits came over as transactions. Past invoices, payments and credits (and Past bills, payments and credits) turn them back into real ones: each keeps its number, customer or vendor, date, lines and sales tax, and each payment and credit is linked to what it paid. Your books don't change by a cent: each document *is* the transaction you brought over, so nothing is counted twice.

1. 1Export the A/R aging detail report from your old app for the last day you brought over, to Excel or CSV (for bills, the A/P aging detail). This is optional but recommended (see the choices below).
2. 2In Past invoices, payments and credits, choose the file and check Match the columns.
3. 3Press Check with (or Check without an aging report). Nothing is saved yet. The preview says how many invoices there are, how many are paid and still open (with what's owed), how many payments and credit memos are linked, which customers are new, and anything that doesn't fit.
4. 4Press Make invoices. Then do the same in Past bills, payments and credits with the A/P aging report.
5. 5Look at Does it all add up?: unpaid invoices should add up to Accounts Receivable, and unpaid bills to Accounts Payable.

With or without the aging report?

• With it (recommended). A Journal report says who paid how much, but not which invoice each payment was for. TallyPip links each payment to the invoice it pays exactly, otherwise to that customer's oldest invoices, and the aging report steers it so every invoice ends up owing exactly what your old app says (and one not in the report is paid in full). Unpaid invoices from before your past transactions (in your opening balances) come in from the report too, for the amount still owed.
• Without it. Payments go to each customer's oldest invoices until they run out, and whatever isn't paid stays open. Due dates are the invoice dates (the Journal report doesn't have them). Fine when everything was paid, or for a quick look.

What comes over, and how

• Invoices: their income lines are the invoice's lines, and sales tax is the amount your old app charged. Cost of goods sold and inventory lines stay in your books but aren't printed on the invoice. Paid ones are marked Paid; open ones can be paid in TallyPip as usual (and reminders stay off until you turn them on).
• Credit memos and vendor credits: applied to the invoices and bills they paid; what wasn't used stays as credit to use. With the aging report, each keeps exactly what it says wasn't used yet.
• Payments not put toward an invoice yet (in the aging report as a minus amount): the payment keeps that much unapplied, and a credit memo for it comes in (numbered PAY- and the payment's number), ready to apply, so unpaid invoices less credits still match Accounts Receivable.
• Payments: each one listed on the invoices (bills) it paid, with the account the money went into and its number. One payment covering several invoices is one payment, like Receive payment. Payments brought over don't wait in Undeposited Funds and aren't offered as matches for new bank transactions: their deposits came over too.
• Customers and vendors not in TallyPip yet are added by name.
• Each one says Came over with your past transactions. They can't be edited, voided or deleted, nor their payments removed: they're your books before TallyPip. You can still print, email, give credit or duplicate them.
• They're left out of your sales tax report (that tax was reported in your old app) and show on each customer's and vendor's page, in Sales by customer, Expenses by vendor and the aging reports.

5. Make your past expenses, receipts, deposits and transfers

The last step, Past expenses, receipts, deposits and transfers, needs no file. Press Check what comes in to see how many of each there are, which vendors and customers are new, and anything that stays as it is (nothing is saved yet), then press Make. Like the invoices, each one *is* the transaction you brought over, so your books don't change.

• Expenses and checks (expenses, checks, cash and credit card expenses): paid from one bank, cash or card account, with their vendor and lines. A check's number is kept (“Check no. 1042”). They count in Expenses by vendor and the 1099 summary for your past months (for vendors you track for 1099s).
• Sales receipts and refund receipts: with their customer, number, lines and sales tax, into (or out of) the account they used.
• Bank deposits: into one bank account, each line where the money came from. Lines from Undeposited Funds are named after the payment or sales receipt they were (“Payment 6552 · Amy's Bird Sanctuary”).
• Transfers: any past transaction moving money between two of your own bank, cash or card accounts (paying the card from checking, too).
• What stays as it is: journal entries, sales tax payments, inventory adjustments, and anything these can't show (a deposit split between two bank accounts, an expense with a line taking money off). The preview lists the last kind, with why.
• Each one says Came over with your past transactions and can't be edited or deleted. They aren't waiting in Undeposited Funds or offered as matches for new bank transactions: they were in your bank before your books started here. Under Transfers & deposits they show as Brought over.

What you'll see afterwards

• Your reports (profit and loss, balance sheet, general ledger) show the history on its real dates, marked Brought over.
• Your books in TallyPip start the day after the last day. Bank transactions from before then are set aside under Bank transactions › Excluded.
• Your bank and card accounts are reconciled up to the last day, except lines the report said hadn't cleared.
• Past transactions come in as your old app recorded them. Invoices, bills, payments, credits, expenses, checks, receipts, deposits and transfers among them become real documents once you make them (steps 4 and 5); journal entries and the like stay transactions, on their dates.

Something not right?

• “The transaction starting here doesn't balance.” That transaction's debits and credits in the file don't match, usually because the report was cut off or a line was edited. Re-export the report and choose it again.
• “These accounts aren't in your chart of accounts yet.” Add them in step 1 (or in Chart of accounts), then choose the file again.
• “It's dated on or before your opening balances.” The report starts too early. Run it from the day after your opening balances date.
• “Your opening balances were brought in for starting from a date.” Those balances left receivables and payables out. Remove them and import them again with With past transactions too chosen.
• “Bring past transactions in before the unpaid invoices and bills.” Remove the imported unpaid invoices and bills, bring the history in, then import those again.
• It stopped partway. You'll see how many went in. Press Remove and import again in Past transactions, then import the whole file again.
• Monthly numbers look off. Check the report covered every day from the start to the last day, and the Last day you're bringing over.
• “Your past transactions came in before TallyPip kept what each one was.” They were brought in before past invoices and bills could be made. Remove them (Remove and import again), bring the Journal file in again, then make your invoices and bills.
• Some payments or credits “aren't all put toward invoices”. Usually a payment for an invoice from before your past transactions, or one paid in advance. It stays in your books as it was; just nothing is linked. If Accounts Receivable then differs from your unpaid invoices by that amount, that's why.
• An invoice “owes a different amount than the aging report says”. Something other than a payment or credit memo changed what was owed in your old app (a journal entry to Accounts Receivable, or a refund). Your books are still right; check that invoice in your old app.
• “Invoice 1043 isn't among your past transactions.” The aging report lists an invoice the Journal report doesn't have: check the dates of both reports and the customer's name. Run the aging report for the last day you brought over.
• Something's wrong with the past invoices (or bills). Press Remove the past invoices in their step (your past transactions stay as they are), fix the file, and make them again. If you've recorded payments in TallyPip against them since, remove those first.
• A past expense, receipt or deposit is wrong, or has no vendor. Press Remove them in Past expenses, receipts, deposits and transfers (your past transactions stay as they are). An expense without a name in your old app comes in without a vendor; fix it there, export the Journal again, and bring it in again.
• “It goes into more than one account, which a deposit here can't show.” The old app's deposit put money into two bank accounts at once (or took some back out). It stays a journal entry, so your books are still right; it just isn't a deposit you can open.
• “Invoice 1001 was already used here, so it came in as 1001-2.” An invoice you made in TallyPip already has that number; the past one gets “-2” so both stay findable.